MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 






Pliotc] 



lEiih-ry Walker. 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORI), 1852. 
From the paintintJ by Jolin Lucas in the National Poitiait Gallery, London. 



Frontispiece. 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 

CORRESPONDENCE WITH 
CHARLES BONER & JOHN RUSKIN 



EDITED BY 

ELIZABETH LEE 



WITH 8 ILLUSTRATIONS 



RAND McNALLY 6? CO 

PUBLISHERS 
CHICAGO 



■ft ,^1$ 



J.Jy€7>/ 






{^// r;^-4/j reserved) 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 


. 


• 9 


LETTERS, 1845- 


6 TO CHARLES BONER 


. 42 


1847 


>> 


. 66 


„ 1848 


>> 


. 86 


1849 


» 


. 114 


1850 


>> 


• 144 


1851 


>i 


. 169 


1852 


>> 


• 199 


S> )» 


TO JOHN JAMES RUSKIN . 


. 214 


>> )) 


TO CHARLES BONER 


. 217 


1853 


ji 


. 228 


»> )i 


TO JOHN JAMES RUSKIN . 


• 247 


t) >• 


TO CHARLES BONER 


. 249 


1854 


» • 


. 263 


>> )> 


TO JOHN RUSKIN . 


. 268 


)> 9) 


TO CHARLES BONER 


. 269 


ii )) 


TO JOHN RUSKIN . 


. 278 


M M 


TO CHARLES BONER 


. 281 



Contents 

PAGE 

LETTERS, 1854 TO JOHN RUSKIN .... 287 

„ ,, TO CHARLES BONER . . . 295 

„ „ TO JOHN RUSKIN . . . -SOI 

M n TO CHARLES BONER . . . 309 

„ „ TO JOHN RUSKIN .... 313 

INDEX ....... 316 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORD, 1852 

CHARLES BONER, 1 853 

MISS MITFORD's cottage at three MILE CROSS 

RICHARD COBDEN, 1 849 

MRS. COBDEN .... 

MISS MITFORD's COTTAGE AT SWALLOWFIELD 

JAMES PAVN ..... 

JOHN RUSKIN, 1854 .... 



Frontispiece 

TO FACE PAGE 
. 12 

. 42 

. 114 

• 137 
. 190 

• 250 

. 278 



INTRODUCTION 

I 

The letters contained in this volume were 
written by Miss Mitford during the last ten 
years of her life (1845-55). The greater 
number are addressed to Charles Boner, the 
rest to John Ruskin, or to his father, John 
James Ruskin. The first letter (to Boner) is 
dated December 12, 1845, ^^^ last (to Ruskin) 
December 26, 1854. The letters to Boner' 
cover the whole of this period, while those to 
Ruskin and his father belong to the years 
1852-4, and are printed here for the first 
time by the kind permission of Mrs. Arthur 
Severn. 

Boner made Miss Mitford's acquaintance 
in August, 1845. Ms was living at Ratisbon, 
but while in England in 1845 he went to see 
Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, and at the 
poet's suggestion, on his way south, paid a 

^ These letters were printed in 1871, in the lirst volume of 
" Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner," edited by Rosa 
Mackenzie Kettle. 



The Correspondence of 

visit to Miss Mitford at Three Mile Cross. 
He had long admired her writings, and for 
the remaining years of her life Boner carried 
on an unbroken correspondence with her. 
" Mr. Boner," she wrote to Mr. Bennoch, 
April 5, 1854, " is a most accomplished man. 
He came to me eight or nine years ago from 
Mr. Wordsworth, and we have been fast 
friends ever since." 

Miss Mitford became personally acquainted 
with Ruskin in January, 1847. ^^ ^ letter 
to Mrs. Partridge, dated January 27, 1847, 
she wrote : " Mr. Ruskin was here last 
week, and is certainly the most charming 
person that I have ever known. . . . He is 
just what if one had a son one should have 
dreamt of his turning out, in mind, manner, 
conversation, everything." * It is a pity that 
more of Miss Mitford's letters to Ruskin are 
not forthcoming.2 But those printed here 

' In this connection we may note that writing to his 
children June 28, 1883, from Brantwood, Charles Eliot 
Norton says : " He [t.e., Ruskin] still remains one of the 
most interesting men in the world." Ruskin was then sixty- 
four years old. 

^ Only a very few are printed, and these are scattered 
through various volumes. 

10 



Mary Russell Mitford 

suffice to show the tone of the correspond- 
ence. In an interesting passage in a letter 
to Boner,i Miss Mitford herself distinguishes 
her methods in letter writing. She says in 
reference to the collection of her letters to 
form a sort of biography, that those she 
wrote for many years to Mrs. Browning were 
written in a far more complete abandonment 
than anything she could do in the way 
of autobiography, and that her letters to 
Haydon and to Ruskin were written with 
the same laisser alley, but ** you,^ to whom 
I have chiefly written as a sort of English 
correspondent, a letter of news to a friend 
abroad, can hardly perhaps judge of these 
frequent and habitual epistles where the pen 
plays any pranks it chooses." The difference 
between the two sorts of letters is well 
brought out in the specimens here given. 

Charles Boner was born at Weston, near 
Bath, on April 29, 181 5. As a boy his 
health was delicate, and his education there- 
fore intermittent. From 1831 to 1837 he 
was tutor to the two elder sons of Constable, 

' See pp. 298, 299. ' 7.6., Charles Boner. 

II 



The Correspondence of 

the painter, to whom Boner was also useful 
in other ways. He looked after Constable's 
private affairs, helped him in preparing and 
writing his lectures on landscape-painting, 
and wrote the letterpress to his book of 
engravings entitled ''Constable's English 
Landscape." After his father's death in 
1833, Boner paid several visits to Germany 
to study the language, staying chiefly at 
Frankfort-on-Main and Darmstadt. In 1839 
he was appointed tutor to the children of 
Prince Thurn and Taxis at Ratisbon, a post 
he held for twenty years. He became an 
intrepid climber and chamois hunter, and in 
1853 published his " Chamois Hunting in 
the Mountains of Bavaria," a book to which 
Miss Mitford constantly refers. He also 
translated from the German version many of 
Hans Andersen's tales. A volume of these, 
published in^i846, entitled "The Nightingale 
and Other Tales," he dedicated to Miss 
Mitford. A few sentences from the letter of 
dedication may be quoted : " You will not, I 
dare say, have forgotten the tales I read to 
you when sitting comfortably by your fireside 



12 




CHARLES BONER, 1853. 
From his " Chamois Hunting in the Mountains of Bavaria." 



Mary Russell Mitford 

some weeks ago.' As you were so delighted 
with the few you then heard, and expressed 
yourself so favourably of the translation, it 
gives me great pleasure to be able to present 
you now with the complete collection. I 
trust you will receive it kindly, and as a 
token that the pleasant fifteenth of October 
is well remembered by me." 

Boner also wrote verses, to which reference 
is made in the letters, and he published a 
little volume of poems in 1858. It is not 
necessary to trace in detail the rest of his 
career, as we are only concerned here with 
his connection with Miss Mitford. He 
continued to live abroad, was special corre- 
spondent to the " Daily News " in Austria 
in the sixties, and died at Munich on 
April 7, 1870. Among his other works his 
"Transylvania" {1865) had some importance 
as a first-hand account of the country, and 
was translated into German in 1867. 

^ The dedication is dated November 10, 1845. 



13 



The Correspondence of 
II 

By 1845 Miss Mitford had done all the 
work that gives her a permanent place in 
English literature. Between that date and 
her death she issued two original works, 
"Recollections of a Literary Life" (1852), 
" Atherton and other Tales" (1854), and a 
collected edition of her Dramatic Works in 
two volumes (1854). To these undertakings 
the letters in this volume contain ample 
reference and they will be dealt with in 
their place. 

No wholly satisfactory biography of Miss 
Mitford exists. To gain a fairly complete 
idea of her life and character it is necessary 
to read the seven published volumes of her 
letters ^ in addition to those printed in the 
following pages, the autobiographical pas- 
sages scattered through the three volumes 
of her " Recollections of a Literary Life," 
as well as, among other books, Mrs. 

' "The Life of Mary Russell Mitford," ed. L'Estrange, 
3 vols., 1870 ; " Letters of Mary Russell Mitford," ed. Chorley, 
2 vols., 1872 ; " The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford," 
ed, L'Estrange, 2 vols., 1882. 

14 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Browning's published letters/ and the life 
of William Harness.- The article on Miss 
Mitford in the " Dictionary of National 
Biography," 3 by the present writer, forms 
a brief biography based on those materials 
with the exception of the letters of Mrs. 
Browning published since the little memoir 
appeared. Thus the definitive Life that 
shall combine all the available sources 
and give a carefully chosen and critical 
selection from Miss Mitford's letters, has 
yet to be written. 

The main facts of Mary Russell Mitford's 
career are well known. She was born at 
Alresford, Hampshire, December i6, 1787. 
Her father was George Mitford, and her 
mother Mary, the only surviving child of Dr. 
Richard Russell, a wealthy clergyman. She 
brought her husband, who was ten years 
her junior, a dowry of ;^28,ooo, beside house 

^ " Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to R. H. Home," 
2 vols., 1877 ; " The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," 
ed. Kenyon, 2 vols., 1897 ; " The Letters of Robert Browning 
and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett," 2 vols., 1899. 

= "The Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness," by 
A. G. L' Estrange, 1871. 

3 Vol. xxxviii, 1894, pp. 84-6. 

15 



The Correspondence of 

and landed property. vShe foolishly refused 
all settlements except ^^200 a year for pin- 
money. Mitford belonged to the younger 
branch of an old family ; he received a 
medical education at Edinburgh, and then 
obtained a practice at Alresford in Hamp- 
shire. He was clever and handsome, young 
and gay, manly and generous, but lacked 
the homely quality of prudence. A zealous 
and uncompromising Whig, he first ruined 
his professional prospects by plunging into 
the fervent hatreds of a hotly contested 
county election, and had to leave Hampshire 
for Berkshire ; then he offended a rich cousin 
who intended Mrs. Mitford to inherit his 
wealth, so that the money was left elsewhere ; 
and finally quarrelled with the corporation 
of his new dwelling-place. Meanwhile he 
endeavoured to increase his resources by 
cards — he was a fine whist-player — and by 
speculation, with the result that in a very 
few years little remained but Mrs. Mitford's 
^200 a year. In these circumstances he, 
with his wife and little daughter, removed 

to Lyme Regis. Matters grew steadily 

16 



Mary Russell Mitford 

worse : almost destitute, they had to leave 
Lyme Regis, and travelled uncomfortably 
to London, where Mitford determined to 
refresh his medical studies by attending 
lectures at Guy's Hospital while considering 
where to fix himself next. In the intervals 
of those pursuits he used to walk about 
London with his little girl, and one of these 
walks, which was somewhat momentous, 
Miss Mitford herself describes : 

One day (it was my birthday, and I was ten 
years old) he took me into a not very tempting- 
looking place, which was, as I speedily found, a 
lottery office. An Irish lottery was upon the point 
of being drawn, and he desired me to choose one 
out of several bits of printed paper (I did not then 
know their significance) that lay upon the counter : 

"Choose which number you like best," said the 
dear papa, "and that shall be your birthday 
present." 

I immediately selected one, and put it into his 
hand : 2,224. 

" Ah," said my father, examining it, " you must 
choose again. I want to buy a whole ticket ; and 
this is only a quarter. Choose again, my pet." 

" No, dear papa, I like this one best." 

" Here is the next number," interposed the 
lottery office keeper, "No. 2,223." 

B 17 



The Correspondence of 

"Ay," said my father, "that will do just as well. 
Will it not, Mary ? We'll take that." 

" No ! " returned I, obstinately ; ** that won't do. 
This is my birthday, you know, papa, and I am 
ten years old. Cast up my number, and you'll find 
that makes ten. The other is only nine." 

My father, superstitious like all speculators, 
struck with my pertinacity, and with the reason 
I gave, which he liked none the less because the 
ground of preference was tolerably unreasonable, 
resisted the attempt of the office keeper to tempt 
me by different tickets, and we had nearly left the 
shop without a purchase, when the clerk, who had 
been examining different desks and drawers, said 
to his principal : 

" I think, sir, the matter may be managed if the 
gentleman does not mind paying a few shillings 
more. That ticket, 2,224, ^^^V came yesterday, 
and we have still all the shares ; one half, one 
quarter, one eighth, two sixteenths. It will be 
just the same if the young lady is set upon it." 

The young lady was set upon it, and the shares 
were purchased. 

The whole affair was a secret between us, and 
my father whenever he got me to himself talked 
over our future twenty thousand pounds — just like 
Alnaschar over his basket of eggs. 

Meanwhile, time passed on, and one Sunday 
morning we were all preparing to go to church, 
when a face that I had forgotten but my father 

18 



Mary Russell Mitford 

had not, made its appearance. It was the clerk 
of the lottery office. An express had just arrived 
from Dublin, announcing that No. 2,224 had been 
drawn a prize of twenty thousand pounds, and 
he had hastened to communicate the good news." ^ 

Mary was an only child. As the foregoing 
story shows, she was a spoiled and somewhat 
precocious little girl. It is said that she 
could read at three years old, and that her 
father used to stand her on the table and 
make her show off to visitors. On the 
strength of the lottery prize, Mitford built 
himself a fine house near Reading, where 
they lived until 1820. Mary was sent to a 
school in London kept by a French emigrant. 
She remained there for five years, developed 
her general taste for reading, and laid the 
foundation of her love for and knowledge of 
French literature. In 1802 she settled at 
home and began to read voraciously for her- 
self, a habit she retained to the end of her 
life. We are told that in January, 1806, she 
read fifty-five volumes in thirty-one days. 
Her first published literary work was verse, 
and she issued volumes of '* Poems " in 1810, 

' Cf. " Recollections of a Literary Life," ii. 
19 



The Correspondence of 

1811, 1812, and 1813. They were severely 
criticized in the "Quarterly," and, although 
they had some success in Great Britain, and 
a great success in America, are now for- 
gotten.^ She contributed poems to the 
** Poetical Register" from 181 1 to 1814, 
when R. A. Davenport was editor. It was 
an intermittent periodical, but among the 
contributors were Scott, Moore, Edgeworth, 
and Horace and James Smith. Miss Mit- 
ford carried on a lively correspondence with 
Davenport between 181 1 and 18 14, and a few 
of the letters are preserved in the British 
Museum. In sending him some verses, 
October 28, 1814, she playfully describes her 
personal appearance at that time. 

I could forgive their being trifles — but, alas ! 
they are heavy trifles — lumpish, short, and thick and 
squab as th jir luckless writer herself. You never 
had the felicity of seeing me, so cannot taste all the 
beauty of this comparison, but as I trust two people 
so well disposed to like each other (there's vanity 
for you !) will not always be kept apart by those two 
formidable words Town and Country, you will see 

^ " Miscellaneous Poems," 1810 ; " Christina ; or, the Maid 
of the South Seas," 181 1 ; " Blanche of Castile," 1812 ; " Poems 
on the Female Character," 18 13. 

20 



Mary Russell Mitford 

how much I resemble my productions. In the 
meantime guard yourself from expecting anything 
fair or tall or slender or blue-eyed or flaxen-haired 
or poetical ; but set a red turnip-raddish, or a full- 
spread damask rose, or an overblown peony, or the 
full moon when it looks very bloody and portentous, 
or anything else that is red and round, by way of 
head, on a good-sized Norfolk turnip by way of 
body, and you will have as correct a picture of your 
poor little friend as heart can desire.^ 

By March, 1820, the family, through 
Mitford's extravagance and his love of play 
and of speculation, were reduced to the 
lowest poverty, and it was necessary for 
Mary to use her talents to keep the wolf 
from the door. They removed to the mean 
labourer's cottage at Three Mile Cross, "a 
series of closets, the largest of which may be 
about eight feet square," immortalized by 
Miss Mitford in "Our Village," and where 
she lived until 1851. 

She began to write for the magazines, 
poetry, criticism, dramatic sketches. " I 
work as hard as a lawyer's clerk," she writes 
to Haydon in 1821. But, convinced that her 

^ The original letter is in the British Museum. 
21 



The Correspondence of 

talent lay in tragedy, she composed several 
plays. ** Julian," with Mac ready in the title 
role, was produced at Covent Garden, 
March 15, 1823, and acted eight times; 
** Foscari," with Charles Kemble as the hero, 
November 4, 1826, and acted fifteen times. 
" Rienzi," the best of her tragedies, was pro- 
duced at Drury Lane, with Young as the 
hero, October 9, 1828, and acted thirty-four 
times. Its success roused Talfourd's 
jealousy, whose '' Ion " was being performed 
at the time. Although these plays, like her 
verse, are now forgotten, they made their 
mark in their day, and " Rienzi " is a very 
fair example of poetical tragedy. But, 
luckily for posterity, the pressing necessity 
of earning money forced Miss Mitford, as 
she puts it herself, to turn " from the lofty 
steep of tragic poetry to the everyday path 
of village stories." The series of country 
sketches, drawn from her own experience, 
known as "Our Village," which originated 
a new style of graphic description,^ and to 
which Miss Mitford owes her fame, first 

* Cf. Harriet Martineau, " Autobiography," i, p. 418. 
22 



Mary Russell Mitford 

began to appear in the " Ladies' Magazine " 
in 1 819; it was a somewhat obscure peri- 
odical, and its circulation speedily increased 
from 250 to 2,000. Miss Mitford became 
celebrated, but the incessant toil told on her 
health. Her mother died January i, 1830, 
and the daughter's state of mind that year is 
well brought out in a letter to R. A. Daven- 
port,^ to whom she was evidently writing after 
a long interval of silence. 

Miss Mitford to R. A. Davenport. 

Three Mile Cross, 
May 19, 1830. 

. . . We have gone on badly enough — very 

poor — but finding some resource in my literary 

efforts, the over-estimation of which has been a 

blessed thing, inasmuch as it has enabled me to 

be of some service to my dear family. As far 

as regards celebrity the pleasure is worth less than 

it seems when viewed from a distance — and yet 

there is an illusion in dramatic reputation which, 

having enjoyed, one should miss. My health is 

failing fast under too great exertion — my father's, 

I am happy to say, remains perfect — my excellent 

mother we have lost last winter — an irreparable 

loss to me, who, if I should have the misfortune to 

* The original is in the British Museum. 

23 



The Correspondence of 

lose my dear father, would be alone and desolate 
in the world. For the rest, I have to be thankful 
for many inestimable friends, and for a general 
kindness and indulgence which would make me 
think well of human nature even if I were not 
disposed to do so on general grounds. 

The father whose conduct caused Miss 
Mitford to labour so hard died in 1842. In 
spite of his faults and failings he must have 
possessed strong personal fascination, since 
neither wife nor daughter ever recognized 
his true character but loved and admired 
him to the end. Yet Miss Mitford had 
given up youth, health, and pleasure in get- 
ting money for her father to spend. '* Her 
life," wrote Charles Boner to a friend in 
1870, " was that of a slave," but she preserved 
" a cheerfulness amidst it all, her love for 
her father never allowing a suspicion of 
blame to rest on him." As a matter of fact 
she sacrificed health and happiness to the 
needs of an egotist whose selfishness blinded 
him to the sacrifice that was made for him ; 
but as his daughter never found anything 
reprehensible in his conduct, her self-decep- 
tion must have equalled his. During the 

24 



Mary Russell Mitford 

whole of her life she had a hard task to 
make ends meet. *' Although want, actual 
want, has not come," she told Miss Barrett 
in 1842, "yet fear and anxiety have never 
been absent," and to the same correspon- 
dent, fourteen months before her death, 
when she was crippled with rheumatism, 
she wrote : " We must not forget, in think- 
ing of my case, that for above thirty years 
I had perpetual anxieties to encounter — my 
parents to support and for a long time to 
nurse, and generally an amount of labour 
and of worry and of care of every sort such 
as has seldom fallen to the lot of woman." 
But we who are the inheritors of her labours 
can never forget that to this pressing need 
of earning money we owe " Our Village," 
which ranks among the great " Country 
Books " in English literature. It is strange to 
learn that Miss Mitford hated the act of com- 
position and inwardly despised the literary 
craft ; she infinitely preferred to cultivate 
her geraniums, and to give play to her 
social instincts, exercising her warm human 
sympathies in the interests of her friends 

25 



The Correspondence of 

Indeed, Miss Mitford did her best to dis- 
suade young people from taking up hterature 
as a career. " It is not a healthy occupa- 
tion," she declared. " I always detested it ; 
and nothing but the not being able to earn 
the money wanted by my parents in other 
ways could have reconciled me to the per- 
petual labour, the feverish anxieties, the 
miserable notoriety of such a career." 

After her father's death the long years of 
self-sacrifice and enforced toil were at an 
end. She had sufficient for her needs. A 
civil list pension of ;^ioo a year had been 
granted her in 1837, and in 1842 a public 
subscription was raised to pay the debts her 
father had left ; what was over added some- 
thing to her narrow income. The last 
decade of her life was well filled with literary 
work, a large correspondence, and her 
beloved books. Her many friends cherished 
her cheerful society and admirable talk. 
Mrs. Browning said she preferred Miss 
Mitford's conversation to her books. She 
possessed that excellent thing in woman, 

a low, sweet voice, likened by her friend 

26 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Mr. Fields to "a beautiful chime of silver 
bells." In spite of her broken health she 
preserved her animation and vitality un- 
impaired. The two letters ^ written to Boner 
and Ruskin respectively a fortnight before 
her death are proof enough, and Mrs. 
Browning, writing to Ruskin about two 
months ^ after the event, says : 

I had a letter from her just before she went, 
written in so firm a hand and so vital a spirit, 
that I could feel little apprehension of never seeing 
her in the body again. 

The letters to Boner mention all the events 
and interests of these later years. She tells 
him of the books she reads, of the publica- 
tion of Macaulay's " History," Tennyson's 
" Princess," Charlotte Bronte s " Jane Eyre " 
and " Shirley," Wordsworth's " Prelude," the 
first volumes of poems by Matthew Arnold 
and by A. H. Clough, Hawthorne's " Scarlet 
Letter," and O. W. Holmes's " Astraea," 
and names a number of books besides of 
less celebrity as well as many that are now 
wholly forgotten or relegated to the topmost 

' Seejpp. 309-315. 2 March 17, 1855. 

27 



The Correspondence of 

shelves of our Hbraries. She tells of the 
friends she sees, of visits paid her by Ruskin, 
Milman, Mr. Fields, Mr. Ticknor, Charles 
Kingsley, and others, and of the people 
encountered at friends' houses, among them 
Mr. and Mrs. Cobden and Bishop Wilber- 
force. Her health and her domestic affairs 
form important topics, and she gives much 
advice and counsel to Boner in regard to 
his literary aspirations and undertakings, 
and the regulating of his life in general. 

Miss Mitford died on January lo, 1855, 
and was buried in Swallowfield churchyard. 

In a letter to Ruskin (November 5, 1855) 
Mrs. Browning thus sums up Miss Mitford's 
character : 

It was a great, warm, outflowing heart, and the 
head was worthy of the heart. People have 
observed that she resembled Coleridge in her 
granite forehead — something, too, in the lower part 
of the face — however unlike Coleridge in mental 
characteristics, in his tendency to abstract specula- 
tion, or indeed his ideality. There might have been, 
as you suggest, a somewhat different development 
elsewhere than in Berkshire — not very different, 
though — souls don't grow out of the ground. 

28 



Mary Russell Mitford 

I agree quite with you that she was stronger and 
wider in her conversation and letters than in her 
books. Oh, I have said so a hundred times. The 
heat of human sympathy seemed to bring out her 
powerful vitality, rustling all over with laces and 
flowers. She seemed to think and speak stronger 
holding a hand — not that she required help or 
borrowed a word, but that the human magnetism 
acted on her nature, as it does upon men born to 
speak. 



Ill 



Miss Mitford's literary work has been so 
often and so well criticized that I do not 
propose to go over the ground again. But 
she has scarcely received due recognition as a 
letter writer. The ease of style, the beauti- 
ful, simple, flowing language, limpid and 
clear, the transparent sincerity, and in cases 
of intimates the ardent affection — for she 
wrote without any thought of publication — 
make Miss Mitford's letters delightful read- 
ing, and give them a high place among the 
familiar letters that are ranked as literature. 
Mrs. Browning considered that Miss Mitford 

herself was better and stronger than any of 

29 



The Correspondence of 

her books, and that her letters and conver- 
sation showed more grasp of intellect and 
general power than was to be inferred from 
her finished compositions. R. H. Home, 
another of her correspondents, held the same 
opinion, and when he told this to Miss 
Mitford, she replied: "Well, you see, my 
dear friend, we must take the world as we 
find it, and it does not do to say to every- 
body all that you would say to one here and 
there." Her sociable disposition, inherited 
from her parents, led her even to correspond 
on affectionate terms with many persons 
whom she had never seen. 

One reason, perhaps, why full justice has 
never been done to Miss Mitford as a letter 
writer is the awkward, scattered way in which 
the letters available have been published.^ 
Later research shows that some of these are 
wrongly dated. It would be rendering good 
service at once to English Literature and 
to Miss Mitford to make a selection of 
the most characteristic letters, following a 
chronological arrangement, and to place 
them together in a single volume. 

' See p. 14. 
30 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Bulwer Lytton once said that the wear and 
tear of life did not leave the mind free for 
good correspondence, " letter writers should 
be idle men." There is much truth in the 
statement, for the best letter writers, like 
Horace Walpole, Cowper, Byron, Mme. de 
Sevigne, Edward Fitzgerald, were not con- 
spicuously busy persons. The best letters 
are, of course, those that are spontaneous, 
and written only for the recipient with no 
thought of ultimate publication. But a 
distinction should be drawn between the 
letters in which the writers wholly, and 
often artlessly, reveal themselves because 
they need such an outlet for their inmost 
feelings — the letters, indeed, of the greatest 
letter writers — and letters which, as a means 
of intercourse between human beings at a dis- 
tance, deal chiefly with outward circumstances. 

Miss Mitford's letters take a middle place, 
and those printed here afford, as has been 
said, examples of letters of intimate affection 
and of letters of ordinary intercourse. In 
reading and judging letters some allowance, 
I think, should always be made for the 

31 



The Correspondence of 

passing mood of the writer. When the 
letter is received, that mood may have ceased, 
and thus to every letter written and dis- 
patched should be applied some of the 
reflections made by Charles Lamb in his 
essay on " Distant Correspondents." It 
often happens that by the time the letter is 
received, even if only a few hours after it 
was written, the sentiments expressed by 
the writer, the circumstances under which 
those sentiments arose, will have changed. 
If this is so, it may be argued, why write 
letters at all ? But most persons are im- 
pelled at times '* to lay open themselves " 
to a sympathetic soul, and it is one way by 
which character is revealed to posterity. 
Yet everything contained in a familiar letter 
should not be taken as representative of 
the permanent character of the writer ; 
allowance should be made for passing 
querulousness, for temporary depression, 
for exaggerated enthusiasm born of the 
mood of the moment. 

Miss Mitford herself, however, in a 
notable passage, i sets the importance of 

' Cf. " Recollections of a Literary Life," iii. 
32 



Mary Russell Mitford 

letters as a revelation of character very 
high. She says : 

Such is the reality and identity belonging to 
letters written at the moment and intended only for 
the eye of a favourite friend, that it is probable that 
any genuine series of epistles, were the writer ever 
so little distinguished, would, provided they were 
truthful and spontaneous, possess the invaluable 
quality of individuality which so often causes us to 
linger before an old portrait of which we know no 
more than that it is a Burgomaster by Rembrandt, 
or a Venetian Senator by Titian. The least skilful 
pen when flowing from the fullness of the heart, and 
untroubled by any misgivings of after-publication, 
shall often paint with as faithful and life-like a touch 
as either of those great masters. 

Miss Mitford's earliest letters show a 
lightness and sprightliness some measure 
of which she lost later. In the letters ^ to 
R. A. Davenport, written between 1811 
and 18 14, there occur delightful passages, 
or sometimes a mere sentence, in the best 
style of letter writing. Here is a glance 
at the estimation in which women were held 
at that date : 

^ The originals are in the British Museum. 
C 33 



The Correspondence of 

March 31, 1811. 

To say nothing of the politeness of writing sense 
to a woman, which is at least giving her credit for 
the power of understanding it. 

In reference to Miss Seward, Miss Mitford 
writes : 

September 22, 1814. 

Did she not owe some of her fame, think you, 
to writing printed books at a time when it was 
quite as much as most women could do to read 
them ? Would her poems have excited so much 
attention had they been published by a John or a 
Thomas instead of an Anna Seward ? Is she not 
judged rather by the original indulgence to her 
sex than by the present ungallant impartiality of 
criticism ? 

Davenport criticizes Miss Mitford's poem 
of "Blanche," and blames her for killing 
her heroine. She retorts : 

I must, however, ask you what, if I had not 
sent her to Heaven, I could possibly have done 
with her on earth ? 

My tender mercy, which chose rather to kill 
Blanch of consumption than my readers of ennui. 

34 



Mary Russell Mitford 

And again, writing on a Sunday, she 
observes : 

See what it is to encourage a poor demoiselle de 
province who has nothing to do on a wet Sunday 
but say her prayers (and saying prayers can't last 
all day, you know), to write long letters and expect 
you to read them ! 

In 1810 Miss Mitford made the acquaint- 
ance of Sir William Elford,^ a banker, 
politician, and dilettante painter. Her first 
letter to him is dated May 26, 18 10, and 
the long series of letters continued until 
his death. 2 They offer a remarkable ex- 
ample of a correspondence between a young 
girl and an elderly man. It was Elford 
who introduced Miss Mitford to Haydon, 
with whom she also corresponded for many 
years. 

The letters to Mrs. Browning, begun in 
1836, ten years before her marriage, and 
continued until Miss Mitford's death, 3 offer 

' 1749-1837- 

' The last published letter is dated December, 1832, when 
Elford was Hearing ninety. 

3 The last accessible letter from Miss Mitford to 
Mrs. Browning is dated August 28, 1854, ^^^ from Mrs. 
Browning to Miss Mitford, December 11, 1854. 

35 



The Correspondence of 

an enduring example of friendship between 
two women of different ages — Miss Mitford 
was forty-nine and Miss Barrett thirty — and 
similar pursuits. The published letters of 
both testify to the esteem and affection of 
the friends. ^ Miss Mitford, indeed — Mrs. 
Browning was more reserved — took genuine 
delight in expressing her feelings. Here is 
a beautiful passage breathing her love for 
her "dear young friend," written in 1842: 

My love and my ambition for you often seem 
to be more like that of a mother for a son, or a 
father for a daughter (the two fondest natural 
emotions) than the common bonds of even a close 
friendship between two women of different ages 
and similar pursuits. I write and think of you, and 
of the poems that you will write, and of that strange 
brief rainbow crown called Fame, until the vision 
is before me as vividly as ever a mother's heart 
hailed the eloquence of a patriot son. 

And a few weeks later, commenting on 
Miss Barrett's praise of her letters, Miss 
Mitford writes : " They come from my heart, 

I Cf. " The Life of Mary Russell Mitford," ed. L'Estrange, 
3 vols., 1870 ; " The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford," 
ed. L'Estrange, 1882, vol. ii, pp. 15-78 passim ; " Letters of 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning," ed. Kenyon, 2 vols., 1897. 

36 



Mary Russell Mitford 

and therefore go to yours : but that is all 
their merit — merit to us only — to the lover 
and the loved." The letters relate in 
Miss Mitford's bright, humorous manner 
all that was happening to herself and her 
friends, she comments on the books she 
reads and on their authors. Often she is 
despondent about her own affairs, and 
over the literary career in general. Com- 
menting on the death of L. E. Landon, 
she observes : " Nothing seems to me so 
melancholy as the lives of authors." About 
the same time, in reference to Scott, she 
says : '' All literary people die over-wrought 
— it is the destiny of the class " ; and of 
Southey : "His fate is equally or even 
more deplorable." There is little doubt 
that Miss Mitford underrated the literary 
vocation, while Mrs. Browning was inclined 
to overrate it. But Mrs. Browning highly 
appreciated Miss Mitford's letters. Writing 
to Robert Browning, February 3, 1845, 
she tells him that Miss Mitford "has 
filled a large drawer in this room with 
delightful letters, heart-warm and soul- 

37 



The Correspondence of 

warm, driftings of nature (if sunshine 
could drift like snow)." 

There are many references in the letters 
to what may be called the amenities of 
letter writing. Miss Mitford does not 
consider herself a punctual correspondent 
— Mrs. Browning held a different opinion 
of her ^ — and declares that her friends 
should never feel annoyed if she does not 
immediately reply, because " I hold, as 
one of the most certain of all tenets, that 
no friends, and very few acquaintances, 
ever mean to affront or neglect one another ; 
and that they who, to use the common 
word, are touchy on such points, do really 
commit as many mistakes and as much 
injustice as they take offences." On an 
occasion when she did send an answer 
without delay she apologizes for " this too 
rapid reply ; but I wanted to lay in a stock 
of punctuality, upon which I might draw 
in case of future delays." 

All the best letter writers have been 
great readers, and their assimilation of 

* See p. 62. 
38 



Mary Russell Mitford 

what they read comes out clearly in the 
style and phraseology of their letters. It 
has been well said by way of comment 
on Byron's letters that he thought in 
Shakespeare. The effects of Miss Mitford's 
reading on her thought and style are 
revealed in every letter she wrote. 

Her taste in literature, if not altogether 
scholarly, was certainly catholic. But in 
spite of her extremely varied and voluminous 
reading both in English and French litera- 
ture, her critical judgment is not always 
sound. Mrs. Browning, in a letter to 
Ruskin (November 5, 1855), declares th^t 
Miss Mitford was "too intensely sympa- 
thetica! not to err often. ... If she 
loved a person, it was enough. . . . And 
yet when she read a book, provided it 
wasn't written by a friend, edited by a 
friend, lent by a friend, or associated with 
a friend, her judgment could be fine and 
discriminating." 

Many errors of critical judgment are to 
be noticed in the letters in this volume. 
But it is only necessary to glance through 

39 



The Correspondence of 

the pages of her " Recollections of a 
Literary Life" to realize that in spite of 
her derelictions she had both taste and 
judgment, and that in regard to the older 
authors, where no personal considerations 
could enter, she was almost invariably 
right. 

Humanly speaking, however, perhaps the 
most valuable thing in Miss Mitford's letters 
is the enduring portrait they give of a type 
of woman who bids fair to become extinct 
in the future. Miss Mitford was undoubtedly 
a woman of letters by profession. Yet she 
never allowed the author to override the 
woman. Perhaps she underrated the literary 
craft, although she fully realized her own 
power and, as is natural, enjoyed her suc- 
cess. Yet, incessantly occupied as she was 
for the best years of her life in what we 
may call professional literary work, she 
found time enough to read for her own 
pleasure, to write long and frequent letters 
to her friends and acquaintances at a dis- 
tance, to cultivate her flower garden and 

attend to the duties of her little household, 

40 



Mary Russell Mitford 

to take an interest in the lives of her 
immediate neighbours both rich and poor, 
and to entertain numerous distinguished 
visitors. All through the years she was 
content with narrow means, and had to 
deny herself many things, even in the 
closing period of her life, that the present 
generation regard not as luxuries but as 
necessaries. She preserved her calm, even 
temper, her cheerful spirit, her charm, her 
ready enthusiasm, to the very end, and 
the piece of her life shown in these letters 
well fulfils the poet's aspiration : 

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, 
Nor leave thee, when grey hairs are nigh, 

A melancholy slave ; 
But an old age serene and bright, 
And lovely as a Lapland night, 

Shall lead thee to thy grave. 



41 



1845-6 



It is generally allowed that Miss Mitford 
owed her fine English style in a great degree 
to her familiarity with French writers. In 
her first letter to Boner she mentions Casimir 
Delavigne, Balzac, Victor Hugo, the Marquis 
de Custine, George Sand, and Eugene Sue, 
as authors with whose works she was well 
acquainted. She speaks also of the appear- 
ance of Carlyle's "Cromwell," Leslie's ''Life 
of Constable," and of the plans for issuing a 
new daily paper — the Daily News — that shall 
represent the inevitable spread of democracy. 
The following letters, until September, 
1 85 1, are all written from Three Mile Cross. 

Miss Mitford to Charles Boner. 

Three Mile Cross, 

December 12, 1845. 

I cannot thank you half enough for your most 
kind and charming letter, and for your good- 

42 



I 



Mary Russell Mitford 

natured recollection of my wish to possess those 
spirit-stirring national poems you speak of. I had 
just met with the " Parisienne " ^ in an earlier 
edition of Casimir Delavigne's Poems (rather odd 
that it should be found in a Brussels collection 
of 1 83 1, and not in that of '34, is it not?), so tha 
now my desire is gratified. I find in an account 
of B^ranger (a most delightful one, by the by) in 
the " Critiques et Portraits litteraires par Sainte- 
Beuve " that he has published five volumes of 
Chansons, and when I go to town I shall doubtless 
be able to pick them out of the contents of Rolandi's 
library, whose catalogue with its seven supplements 
would be a puzzle much harder than that of the 
Sphinx. Thank you, too, for telling me of " Les 
Petits Maneores d'une Femme vertueuse " — that 
will be by Balzac.'* "Les Paysans " I have seen, 
at least the first volume, and I don't choose to 
believe it a true representation, because I do not 
believe that the mass of a great nation can be so 
base and cunning; though I admit that the Marquis 
de Custine, in his very clever work, '' Le Monde 
comme il est," gives pretty nearly the same account 
of the peasantry of Normandy. But Balzac must 
be a cockney Parisian (if such an idiom may be 
allowed). The boudoir or the opera are his proper 
scenes, and he has no love for the people, which 

' A spirited marching song, the "Marseillaise" of 1830. 
Auber composed the music for it. Cf. Delavigne, " Messeni- 
ennes et Poesies diverses," Paris, 1835, p. 319. 

43 



The Correspondence of 

is not only a great fault, but a great mistake in 
these days, when they are rising in importance 
every hour. George Sand and Eugene Sue are 
wiser, as well as the great Old Bard ; ^ and they 
will have their reward not only in the diffusion of 
their reputation, but in its duration. Even Mrs. 
Gore, who may be looked on as a sort of weather- 
cock to show which way the wind of popularity 
blows, has just put forth a Christmas story, in 
which the scene is laid in a farm-house, and the 
squire's son marries a clerk's daughter.^ 

Before I forget, let me tell you that on consult- 
ing all the military authorities within reach (one of 
them a drill sergeant), I find them unanimous in 
deciding that the attitude in question corresponds 
to the word "Carry arms" — it is, in fact, the posi- 
tion of a sentinel on duty. With regard to the 
" Sandman," we have no such personage among 
our nursery bugbears, 3 and it would not be under- 
stood without an explanatory note, and even then 
would be a bit of foreign idiom unworthy of 
your truly English translation. The word that 
may be accounted synonymous amongst us as a 

^ Victor Hugo. 

^ Cf. "The Snow Storm. A Christmas Story." With 
illustrations by G. Cruikshank. 1845. 

3 Miss Mitford is in some confusion here, but she was very 
ignorant of Germany and the Germans. The Sandmann is 
equivalent to our dustman, one who scatters sand in the 
eyes of little children and makes them sleepy, in nursery 
language, ready for bed. 

44 



Mary Russell Mitford 

threat to naughty children is " Old Bogie." On 
this point I have inquired of nurses and governesses 
and children themselves (a Yorkshire dame and 
damsel from Cornwall were among the catechu- 
mens), and the universal response was " Old 
Bogie," though who the gentleman so designated 
may be is more than I can venture to guess. But 
I think you will be quite safe in putting his 
name in the front of your story. I look forward 
with great interest to the publication of that 
charming book, which I shall enjoy quite as much 
as if I were one of your legitimate readers of 
eight years old, instead of fifty-eight next Tues- 
day. Is the other translation the History of 
Rudolf of Hapsburg? or have I, with my cus- 
tomary infelicity, made a mistake in the Emperor's 
name ? Do be so good as to tell it me, and 
don't be discouraged by the irksomeness of trans- 
lation. You will find rendering poetry more a 
work of art, and therefore more self-rewarding. 

I wish I had any news to send you, but I hear 
from town of little except the amateur play — (Ben 
Jonson's " Every Man in his Humour ") — in which 
Messrs. Dickens and Forster, of the " Examiner," 
and Mark Lemon and Douglas Jerrold, have been 
figuring. I They say that Mr. Forster's " Kitely " 

^ Produced at Miss Kelly's theatre, Dean Street, Soho, 
September 21, 1845. Charles Dickens played Captain 
Bobadil. Cf. J. Forster, " Life of Charles Dickens," 1873, 
ii, pp. 182 et seq. 

45 



The Correspondence of 

was excellent; and one new paper, ^ ultra- whig, is 
coming forth with the name of Mr. Dickens, who 
is to write the " Feuilletons," and the combined aid 
of all the "Punch" people. It is thought a great 
risk. 

The most important book has been Carlyle's 
"Cromwell," 2 in which the mutual jargon of the 
biographer and his subject is very curious. Never 
was such English seen. The Lord Protector comes 
much nearer to speaking plain than his historian. 
I have been reading with great interest (thinking 
of you) Leslie's " Life of Constable," 3 a charming 
book about an admirable man. 

Miss Mitford's projected trip to Paris 
never came off. She gives Boner advice 
about a literary career, and incidentally 
complains of the speed with which books 
are produced in words that might have 
been written to-day. 

March 23, 1846. 
I wrote you a long letter some weeks ago, which 
I hope you have received by this time ; and now 
I have to thank you very heartily for another of 

^ The first number of the " Daily News " was pubhshed 
January 21, 1846. Dickens was editor for January and 
February. 

2 Published 1845. 3 Published 1845. 

46 



Mary Russell Mitford 

your pretty books. " The Fir Tree " and " Red 
Shoes " ^ seem to me exceedingly good, but unless 
these works be very profitable (which is an answer 
to everything), I had rather see you writing prose 
of your own, and laying the foundation of a solid 
reputation. I am quite sure there is in you the 
stuff of a true man of letters — a Southey, let us 
say — and having taken the first step under the 
protection of a celebrated name, I should rejoice 
to find the next advance made in your own name. 
However, if the Danish be more profitable, that 
is an answer to all. As it is, I had only last week 
a letter from a friend of Miss Edgeworth, to say 
that some little nephews and nieces (not Miss E.'s) 
had been so enchanted with your previous stories 
that they had been acting them in their house in 
Dublin : this is worth a thousand empty praises 
from grown people. 

You will be sorry to hear that I, generally so 
active, am quite crippled by rheumatism, and 
hobble about like a woman of ninety. I have 
some hope that it is the result of this most 
unusual season, and that when the real spring 
comes (for as yet we have only the name) and 
brings with it the primroses and the violets, I 
may be able to get out and look for them. At 
present (this 23rd of March) we are all winter- 
locked together. 

' Translations from Hans Andersen. 
47 



The Correspondence of 

February-March, 1846. 

I thank you heartily for your very interesting 
letter, and shall look forward with no common 
expectation to a translation carefully made by 
one so very competent. In these days, when 
translating, composition, all sorts of book-work 
seem done as if by steam, it is something choice 
and rare to find poet and publisher agreeing to 
recognize the virtue of slowness. Well, the trees 
of long growth are those of long life ; the gourd 
of the night withers before sunset, so it will be 
seen with these pen-and-ink plants, be sure. 

I yesterday received from Miss Barrett a very 
interesting letter sent to her by Miss Martineau. 
She will get into her cottage before April, and 
gives a charming account of her terrace, her field, 
and her quarry, whence she got the stones for 
her terrace wall, and which she means to hang 
with ivies and honeysuckles, and tuft with fox- 
gloves and ferns. She gives also a charming 
account of the great Poet,^ although he has just 
lost his only brother, and had bad news from 
his sick daughter-in-law. 

I had had an excellent account of him a few days 
ago from our mutual friend, Henry Crabb 
Robinson (also the bosom friend of Goethe), who 
had been spending a month at Ambleside, to be 
near him. He says that his great resource is 
whist — the great resource of age. Somebody 

' Wordsworth. 
48 



Mary Russell Mitford 

comes to see him and brings two packs of cards, 
which last till the same somebody comes again the 
following year. Mr. Robinson said that Miss 
Martineau was much in favour, not only with 
Mr. Wordsworth, but with his female coterie, Mrs. 
Fletcher, Miss Fenwick, Mrs. Arnold, and Mrs. 
Wordsworth, quite a flower-garden of ladies such as 
Richardson used to cultivate. If I were there I 
should want men (at fifty-eight one may say so, and 
you will know what I mean : an infusion of manly 
intellect and manly spirit is indispensable in a 
country life). Henry Chorley passed two days with 
me last week : he says that Mr. Reeve is in Paris. 
His little girl runs about his house (I mean Henry 
Chorley s) like a pet kitten, and is, he says, a most 
sweet little creature. I hope that Mr. Chorley's 
play will be brought out at Covent Garden by 
Miss Cushman, who is now, to my great horror, 
playing Romeo to her sister's Juliet. I don't like 
she-Romeos, but she has made what is called a hit, 
though hardly, I should think, of the best sort. 
How can a woman make the right sensation in 
doublet and hose ! 

Is not Hood a great serious poet? Are not the 
"Bridge of Sighs" and the "Haunted House" 
magnificent? Henry Russell has been setting and 
singing the " Song of the Shirt," and being a great 
tragic actor (in spite of the music), it is a very fine 
thing. I agree heartily with you about Mr. 
Procter's songs. They come next to Burns's, I 

D 49 



The Correspondence of 

think, and far before Moore's. You will be glad to 
hear that he has just got a commissionership, and is 
released from the drudgery of conveyancing. His 
wife (Basil Montague's wife's daughter) is a very 
pleasant person. 

I am going to Paris in May. Can you help me 
to any letters of introduction ; not to grand people, 
of course, but to such as you would like to see 
yourself.'' The man whom I should best like to 
know is, I am afraid, not seeable — Beranger. 
Think of this, dear friend. A very clever and very 
excellent young man is to escort me, and probably 
a young lady, and, being artistic, he would like to 
know any actor or musician. I think to spend six 
weeks there. Miss Barrett and Mr. Kenyon say 
that I shall not go, which, if I wanted a motive to 
keep my resolution, would of course supply one. 
Miss Barrett is so much better that she sits up in 
an arm-chair, and walks across the room, although 
she does not leave it. Can you help her and me to 
any titles of French novels? Any of Balzac's or 
Charles de Bernard's ? 

June 6, 1846. 
The enclosed will prove that I had not forgotten 
to answer your previous kind letter. It was written 
to be taken by a friend who did not call for it, and 
then lay unseen in my desk till your two welcome 
notes came to recall it to mind. I now write in 
great haste, while a friend waits to transmit it to 

50 



Mary Russell Mitford 

you, and have only time to say how very fine I 
think "The Nightingale" — quite original ;i Words- 
worth might have written it thirty years ago. Be 
sure that I shall be honoured to have my name in 
your preface. 

You will wonder to see my name on the title- 
page of a French book.^ Mr. Rolandi came to me 
to select from the two hundred volumes of 
Alexandre Dumas one volume of five hundred 
pages fit for ladies and families, and young people, 
our first customer being the Head Master of Eton, 
who takes one hundred copies. It has been a great 
trouble, and as we print at Brussels, I fear all sorts 
of blunders from my not seeing the proof-sheets. 
Pray come and see me if you visit England, 3 and 
forgive this hasty scrawl. 

Haydon, the historical painter, committed 
suicide by shooting himself in his studio, 
June 20, 1846. He had been greatly de- 
pressed by his failure as a candidate to 
paint a fresco in the new Houses of Parlia- 
ment, and by the further disappointment of 
his patrons' lack of appreciation of his 
pictures of the " Banishment of Aristides," 

^ A poem by Boner. 

^ " Fragment des ceuvres cl'A. Dumas choisis a I'usage de 
la jeunesse," par Miss M. R. Mitford, 1846. 

3 Boner did not go to England until the next year, 1847. 

SI 



The Correspondence of 

and " Nero playing on the Lyre while Rome 
is burning." He had been an intimate 
friend of both Miss Mitford and Miss 
Barrett, and his death and the manner of 
it was a great shock to them. Miss Mitford 
had corresponded with Haydon fairly regu- 
larly from 1 817 to 1 83 1, and then again 
from 1 84 1 to the time of his death. 

y«/y, 1846. 

How can I ever thank you half enough for the 
two charming volumes which I have just received, 
and for the surprise, the honour, and the gratifica- 
tion of the prefatory address ? The books are, 
in every sense of the word, beautiful ; the illustra- 
tions worthy of the stories, and the translation best 
of all. The one only word that I have found to 
change in the next edition is " grey " as applied 
to the Nightingale — lowly brown is the right colour, 
though no doubt Mr. Andersen said "grey." 
Don't you remember that Thomson, always so 
accurate, talks of her russet robe ? That story of 
"The Nightingale," I which contains so fine an 
allegory, and " The Wild Swans," ^ seem to me 
the most charming of the book. Is that your own 
opinion ? Once more accept my truest thanks. 

Poor, poor Haydon ! He was my old and 

* Stories by Hans Andersen, translated by Boner. 
52 



Mary Russell Mitford 

intimate friend and correspondent for above thirty- 
five years. At one time he used to write to me 
three or four times a week, and although my 
occupations, and my business, and my disHke of 
letter writing had much diminished that closeness 
of intercourse, yet the friendship continued un- 
broken. This event quite upset me, and I have 
hardly recovered it yet. I shall transcribe for you 
a letter on the subject from Miss Barrett, which 
I think you will like to see. She says : 

" The shock of Mr. Haydon's death overcame 
me for several days. Our correspondence had 
ceased a full year and a half, but in the last week he 
wrote several notes to me, and by his desire I have 
under my care boxes and pictures of his which he 
brought himself to the door. Never did I anticipate 
this ! Never did I imagine it was other than one 
of the passing embarrassments so unhappily fre- 
quent with him ! Once before he had asked me to 
give shelter to things belonging to him, which, 
when the storm had blown over, he took back 
again. I did not suppose that in this storm he was 
to sink. Poor, noble soul ! And be sure that the 
pecuniary embarrassment was not what sunk him. 
It was a mind still more lost. It was the despair 
of the ambition by which he lived, and without 
which he could not live. In the self-assertion 
which he had struggled to hold up through life, 
he went down into death. He could not bear any 
longer the neglect, the disdain, the blur cast on 

53 



The Correspondence of 

him by the age, so he perished. The Cartoon 
disappointment, the grotesque antagonism of Tom 
Thumb, to which he recurred most bitterly in one 
of his last notes to me — these things were too 
much for him. The dwarf slew the giant. His 
love of reputation, you know, was a disease with 
him, and for my part I believe that he died of it. 
That is my belief. In the last week he sent me 
his portrait of you among the other things ; when 
he proposed sending it he desired me to keep it for 
his sake ; but when it came, a note also came to say 
that he could not make up his mind to part with it 
— he would lend it to me for a while. A proof 
with the rest that the act was not premeditated — 
a moment of madness, or a few moments of madness 
— who knows ! " 

So far our great poetess. I, knowing how doat- 
ingly fond he was of his wife and children, believe 
that he calculated on the sympathy that would 
follow the event, and that in the infinite whirl of 
thought preceding such a deed the notion of sacri- 
ficing himself to their interest mingled. Mrs. 
Haydon, from whom I heard yesterday, imputes it 
wholly to the conduct of a friend on whom he had 
relied during the last twenty years. She does not 
name him. However that may be, the effect will 
be a most comfortable provision for his wife and 
family. She has a pension of ^50 a year from the 
Queen, and one of ^25 from Lady Peel. ;^400 
was subscribed the first day at Mr. Serjeant 

54 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Talfourd's (to whom, as to Elizabeth Barrett, I 
introduced him). The Royal Academy have given 
;^50, the Duke of Sutherland ^200, and doubtless 
other wealthy persons will come forward. People 
will remember now that he was once the most 
promising painter in England (when my good old 
friend Sir William Elford gave ;^7oo for the 
" Judgment of Solomon "), and that if he did not 
quite keep that promise, he yet gave a great 
impulse to art ; and that the three Landseers, 
Eastlake, Cope, Maclise, and Lance were his 
pupils ; that he first made casts of the Elgin marbles 
with his own hands, and that his Lectures on 
Art are only second to Sir Joshua's. He has left 
twenty-six volumes of memoirs, and wishes them 
printed. Doubtless, judging from his letters and 
conversation, they are full of piquancy and clever- 
ness, for he lived with all the eminent men of letters 
of his day, and was a close and shrewd observer 
and a fresh and bold writer and talker. Indeed, 
so full was he of life and animation, and youth 
of mind, that I never could join Death and 
Haydon in my thoughts, and that his decease, 
setting aside the frightful manner of it, shocked 
me as a discrepancy, like the death of a young 
bride. 

Poor Haydon's wife was a most beautiful woman, 
just like the Rebecca of " Ivanhoe," a Jewess born. 
Mr. Hymen, who appeared at the inquest, was 
her son by her first marriage, and one of the 

55 



The Correspondence of 

best scholars that the Reading School ever sent 
forth. Poor Haydon left three children, two boys, 
one in the navy, and one to whom Sir Robert Peel 
has given an appointment, and a very pleasing and 
pretty girl, his daughter. Sir Robert's conduct all 
through has been most noble — so it was when poor 
Mrs. Hemans died. He sent her, in her last illness, 
;^ioo from his own purse, and an appointment for 
her favourite son. 

Your verses are full of truth and beauty. I 
shall send a copy to Mrs. Haydon and to Miss 
Barrett. I do not apologize for this long account 
of a man so interesting : the subject possesses me 
terribly — I cannot get rid of it ; indeed, it seems to 
have made a deep impression everywhere. Mr. 
Home has written on it — the best thing he ever did 
write — which appeared in the " Daily News," but I 
like your stanzas better. By the way, the " Daily 
News," since the price is reduced to twopence-half- 
penny, has a circulation of 23,000, beating the 
" Times." Advertisements will of course follow this 
great circulation, and will then make it a most 
profitable concern. I have not been to France this 
year, nor even to London, except to see dear Eliza- 
beth Barrett, for a reason which I will tell you when 
we meet. She is better and better ; she walks to 
the bookseller's at the corner of the street, and 
drives to Hampstead and Highgate. My Dumas 
book is not out yet. Two other volumes of 
Madame D'Arblay's Memoirs are coming out, 

56 



Mary Russell Mitford 

arranged by Henry Chorley. The most striking 
book for years is the " Life of John Foster," ^ the 
great essayist, a most noble person. 

August 13, 1846, 
I have but a moment, dearest Mr. Boner, in 
which to request your acceptance of the small 
edition of " Belford Regis," 2 which has just been 
issued. Your verses gave great pleasure to dear 
Mrs. Haydon, to whom I sent a copy. 

September, 1846. 

Some of my friends are just going to Frankfort, 
and I trouble them with this letter to ask if you 
have received a packet from me sent about a fort- 
night ago and containing a new edition of " Belford 
Regis," the least bad I think of my prose writings. 
Has Balzac published anything since his " Les 
petits Maneges d'une Femme vertueuse," and the 
first volume of " Les Paysans " ; and what is Eugene 
Sue about ? 

I had last night a visit from Mr. Pitman,3 of Bath, 

^ A Baptist minister (b. 1770, d. 1843) and contributor to 
the " Eclectic Review." Cf. " Life and Correspondence of 
John Foster," ed. J. E. Ryland, 2 vols., 1846. 

' The first edition of Miss Mitford's novel " Belford 
Regis, or Sketches of a Country Town " {i.e., Reading), 
was pubhshed in 1835. Mrs. Browning considered it her 
best work, but it lacks the charm and spontaneity of *' Our 
Village." 

3 Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-97), inventor of a new system 
of shorthand, conducted a private school at Bath, 1839-43, 

57 



The Correspondence of 

a young enthusiast, who has invented a new system 
of shorthand ; and, above all, a new alphabet for 
printed words, with, of course, a new system of 
orthography conformable to the sound of words. 
He says that children learn by this new method in 
an incredibly short time, and means to try the 
system in some of the metropolitan ragged schools. 
In the meanwhile he has ten thousand converts and 
pupils, prints a journal in his new way, and is in 
the course of printing the Bible and the " Paradise 
Lost " (I wonder how many people read " Paradise 
Lost " now-a-days in any printing). Among his 
disciples are James Montgomery, Dr. Raffles, Simp- 
son of Edinburgh, Mr. Bright (Cobden's friend), 
and Rowland Hill, of the penny postage ; the three 
last, practical men. 

I have sent him to-day to see a friend of mine, 
the Hon. Mrs. Fitzgerald, who a few years ago 
published a volume of specimens of a primeval 
language — the whole language, indeed, in which I 
remember she forgot the little words "yes" and 
"no"!!! Ask your friend, Count Pocci,^ if he 
remembers a certain Mrs. Farmer, the mother of 
Madame Klenze, of Munich. She and her younger 

and established there a Phonetic Institute, and conducted a 
" Phonetic Journal," to further his methods. 

' Graf Franz Pocci (1807-76) was a distinguished black- 
and-white artist and illustrated a large number of books. 
He was on the staff of the " Fliegende Blatter," the German 
" Punch," and was also an author and musical composer of 
merit. Cf. " Deutsche AUgemeine Biographie," xxvi, pp. 331-8. 

58 



Mary Russell Mitford 

children live in a nice house about a mile off, built 
by my father, where I passed the best years of my 
life, and which I am glad to find in the hands of so 
kind a friend and so excellent a woman. Her 
daughter, Mary, showed me the other day a play- 
bill of an opera designed by Count Pocci, in which 
he figured as actor, poet, and composer, with a 
portrait of himself at the top as an alchymist. I 
was quite glad to see this, for I had felt so much 
admiration for his charming designs, that I wished 
to hear as much of him as I could. They speak of 
him with enthusiasm. 

The next letter contains the news of 
Elizabeth Barrett's marriage to Robert 
Browning. The friendship between Miss 
Mitford and Mrs. Browning extended over 
an unbroken period of twenty years, and 
offers, among other things, an enduring 
example of the fallibility of most dicta 
concerning the supposed incapacity of 
women for friendship. The first meeting 
between the two took place on May 27, 
1836, when Miss Mitford was forty-nine 
years of age and Miss Barrett thirty. 
Miss Mitford was staying at Serjeant 
Talfourd's in London, and describes the 
meeting in a letter to her father. 

59 



The Correspondence of 






"I told you that Mr. Kenyon was to 
take me to the giraffes and the diorama, 
with both of which I was delighted. A 
sweet young woman whom we called for 
in Gloucester Place went with us — a Miss 
Barrett — who reads Greek as I do French, 
has published some translations from 
^schylus, and some most striking poems. 
She is a delightful young creature ; shy, 
timid, and modest. Nothing but her desire 
to see me got her out at all . . . she says 
it is like a dream that she should be talking 
to me, whose works she knows by heart." ^ 
Miss Mitford, indeed, considered Miss Barrett 
to be one of the most interesting persons 
she had ever seen ; it must not be for- 
gotten that Miss Mitford, for thirty years 
before she met Miss Barrett, had been 
accustomed to see frequently the most 
interesting men and women of her time. 

As Miss Mitford lived in the country 
and Miss Barrett in London, and after her 

' It is interesting to note, in connection with future events, 
that in mentioning the guests at dinner at Serjeant Tal- 
fourd's on May 26th Miss Mitford inckides "a Mr 
Browning, a young poet (author of ' Paracelsus ')." 

60 



Mary Russell Mitford 

marriage in Italy, paying only rare visits 
to England, the two friends did not often 
meet face to face, although, as the letters 
show, Miss Mitford made a practice of 
going to town to spend a day with her 
friend as often as she could. They were 
thus dependent on letters as a means of 
communication. Unfortunately Miss Mit- 
ford's available letters to Miss Barrett are 
scanty for the period with which we are 
dealing (1845-55), but references to them 
are numerous in letters written to other 
friends by both Miss Mitford and Miss 
Barrett. 

Miss Barrett kept her marriage a secret 
from Miss Mitford, as from the rest of her 
friends. As soon as the great news might 
be told, Mrs. Browning informed Miss Mit- 
ford, who wrote a letter which was received 
at Orleans while the Brownings were on 
their way from Paris to Italy. Mrs. 
Browning replied immediately : " I thank 
you from the bottom of my heart for 
saying that you would have gone to 

church with me. Yes, I know that you 

61 



The Correspondence of 

would. And for that very reason I for- 
bore involving you in such a responsi- 
bility, and drawing you into such a 
net." 

In conclusion, she asked Miss Mitford 
to continue to write to her, and notwith- 
standing the distance between England and 
Italy — communication was less easy and 
less swift than it is now — notwithstanding 
the new ties and the rare meetings, the 
correspondence was carried on until Miss 
Mitford's death in 1855 with such absolute 
regularity that if a letter failed to reach 
Florence at the usual hour its non-arrival 
threw the Brownings into a state of anxiety : 
"Your letters come so regularly to the hour, 
you see, that when it strikes without them, 
we ask why." 

October, 1846. 
I have to thank you for your most kind letter, 
and for your verses, which are full of power ; and 
now you must summon all your indulgence and all 
your faith in the sincerity of my esteem and my 
goodwill, and allow me to entreat you to find some 
better literary agent than my poor self I live in 
the country, going rarely, if ever, to London, and 

62 



Mary Russell Mitford 

then to one house only. I have as few literary 
friends and acquaintances as is well possible, and 
of the race of Editors and Journalists I know abso- 
lutely nothing. Then if I write to proprietors of 
magazines, or newspapers, or periodicals of any 
sort, requesting them to insert a friend's poem, 
the reply is sure to be that they overflow with 
poetry, but that they want a prose story from me, 
and most likely they trump up a story of some 
previous application, and dun with as much 
authority as if I really owed them the article, 
and they had paid for it. Now all this is not 
only supremely disagreeable to me, but makes 
me a most ineffective and useless mediator for 
you. 

You should have a man upon the spot for those 
things, and not an old woman at a distance, hating 
the trade of authorship, and keeping as much aloof 
as possible from all its tracasseries. You will under- 
stand from this, my good friend, that if I were to 
write a story for a book of yours, I should have 
half a dozen people claiming some imaginary pro- 
mise, and clamouring, as if I had robbed them in 
giving away a worthless tale. As to the "Times," 
I am, it is true, intimate with the proprietors, but 
it happens that Bear Wood is the only house in 
England where that universal paper is never men- 
tioned, or, if mentioned, only to be denied. So, 
my dear friend, you must establish, when you come 
to England again, some correspondence with one 

63 



The Correspondence of 

or other of the thousand and one Hterary people 
in London — which I am sure you can do most 
easily. 

The great news of the season is the marriage 

of my beloved friend, Elizabeth Barrett, to Robert 

Browning.^ Do you know him? I have seen him 

once only, many years ago. He is, I hear, from 

all quarters, a man of immense attainment and 

great conversational power. As a poet, I think 

him overrated. The few things of his which are 

clear, seem to me as weak as water ; and those 

on which his reputation rests, " Paracelsus," and 

" Bells and Pomegranates," are to me as so many 

riddles. I dread exceedingly for her the dreadful 

trial of the journey across France to Italy, and the 

total change in life and habits. Mrs. Jameson and 

her niece joined them at Paris, but my last letter 

was from Moulins,^ and she then seemed much 

exhausted. God grant she be not quite worn out 

by the terrible journey to Pisa ! The prettiest 

account of a love-match for a long while is to 

be found in the sixth volume of " Madame 

D'Arblay's Memoirs," excellently arranged by 

my friend Henry Chorley. It is charming to 

see the account of their cottas^e life — she workinef 

for him in England, he for her in France. I have 

» The marriage took place in London, September 12, 1846. 
See also p. 66. 

^ October 2, 1846. See " The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning," ed. Kenyon, 1897, vol. i, p. 297. 

64 



Mary Russell Mitford 

also been much amused by the " Coq du Clocher," 
by the author who calls himself J drome Paturot.^ 
Do you know anything about him ? He is 
immensely clever, and very entertaining. 

Tell me anything about French literature — I 
know little of German, and, to say the truth, take 
small interest in it, though Count Pocci interests 
me much from his universality of talent. 

^ The pseudonym of Marie Roch Louis Reybaud (1799- 
1879), political economist and statesman, author of clever 
satirical social novels that had an immense success. 



65 



1847 



February, 1847. 

I sit down with malice prepense to pay in quantity 
though not in quality your most amiable letter ; 
prompted thereto not merely by my strong desire 
to chat with a friend whom I very greatly value 
and admire, but by my anxiety to hear that he is 
quite recovered. We have had a most trying 
winter. I never have lost so many old friends. 
Indeed, the aged and the infirm have almost 
universally dropped from the tree. 

I at Miss Barrett's wedding ! ^ Ah, dearest 
Mr. Boner, it was a runaway match : never was I 
so much astonished. He prevailed on her to meet 
him at church, with only the two necessary witnesses. 
They went by railway to Southampton, crossed to 
Havre, up the Seine to Rouen, to Paris by railway. 
There they stayed a week. Happening to meet 
with Mrs. Jameson, she joined them in their journey 
to Pisa; and accordingly they travelled by diligence, 
by railway, by Rhone boat — anyhow — to Mar- 
seilles, thence took shipping to Leghorn, and then 
setded themselves at Pisa for six months. She 
says that she is very happy. God grant it con- 

' See p. 61. 
66 



Mary Russell Mitford 

tinue ! I felt just exactly as if I had heard that 
Dr. Chambers had given her over when I got the 
letter announcing her marriage, and found that she 
was about to cross to France. I never had an idea 
of her reaching Pisa alive. She took her own maid 
and her Flush. ^ 

I saw Mr. Browning once. Many of his friends 
and mine, William Harness, John Kenyon, and 
Henry Chorley, speak very highly of him. I 
suppose he is an accomplished, man, and if he 
makes his angelic wife happy, I shall of course 
learn to like him. 

Thank you very much for your information as to 
French books. The last that I read of Balzac's was 
" Une Instruction criminelle," which finishes the 
tragical history of poor Lucien de Rubempr^, begun 
in " Les Illusions perdues," and continued with 
admirable power in " Un grand Homme de Pro- 
vince a Paris." He is a wonderful writer. Yes, I 
know the works of both the Comtes de Maistre, the 
great Catholic writer, and his brother who wrote 
the " Voyage autour de ma Chambre." It is very 
graceful. But the writer of that day that I like best 
is Paul Louis Courier, and I think that since writing 
to you I have read all Beaumarchais. I mean the 
four volumes of " Memoires," which are really as 
clever as " Figaro," and which I earnestly recom- 
mend to you. They are pamphlets published on 

' The little dog Miss Mitford had given her. ^ See note, 
p. 60. 

67 



The Correspondence of 

occasion of different lawsuits, which kept all Paris 
in a roar. He was certainly one of the most 
remarkable men in the world. " Picciola " is very 
pretty — ^just that. We have no books of much 
account here. Two new vols., the sixth and 
seventh of Madame D'Arblay's "Memoirs," Heneage 
Jesse's "Memoirs of the Pretenders," Edward Jesse's 
" Book of Dogs," and Smith's " Streets of London," 
are about the best of them. 

Mr. Walter's ("Times") health is failing, and 
the paper will have to combat the success of the 
" Daily News," which Mr. Dilke ("Athenaeum ") is 
bringing out at half price. The " Times " has also 
changed its editor, Mr. Delane having left it, and 
(I believe) young John Walter taken to the post. 
These are great secrets, but I believe I am right. 

This, I think, is the principal news. Everybody 
speaks well of your pretty books, and I trust that 
your publisher has cause to be of the same opinion. 
I shall be delighted to see the new volume. My 
neighbours, the Farmers, are going to Germany, so 
that they will see Count Pocci, of whom they speak 
so well. They are excellent people, but I do not 
see much of them, as sometimes, you know, happens. 
Do you know Mr. Ruskin, the Oxford graduate, 
whose letters on art are so striking ? He is a most 
charming person, and I thought of you often when 
he was here last week.^ You would suit each other. 

' Miss Mitford's first meeting with Ruskin took place in 
January, 1847. 

68 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Thank you a thousand times for all your good- 
ness to me, especially for forgiving my being so 
bad a correspondent. I shall mend. An old 
relative of my father's — the only relation with 
whom I do correspond, and, indeed, almost my 
only relation as cousinship counts in the South, 
writes to me and I to her about three times in two 
years, each loving the other very heartily ; so I 
suppose it runs in the blood. At all events, I do 
very sincerely admire and regard you, and I trust 
we shall meet this year at my poor house. 

^une, 1847. 

Thank you a thousand and a thousand times for 
all your kindness, especially this fresh one of the 
list of French books. The Memoirs, Biographies, 
and Portraits are particularly welcome, French 
Memoirs being my favourite reading. For I assure 
you and Madame de Bonstetten that I have read 
long ago, something between sixty and eighty 
works of that sort of the old times, from the 
" Memoires de Sully " downward ; and, only this 
year, read over again those of the Cardinal de 
Retz and of Mademoiselle de Montpensier. Tell 
her this, or she will think me a fanatic for " le 
genre romantique." 

Have you yourself or has she read the lyrics of 
Victor Hugo? " Les Feuilles d'Automne," " Les 
Chants de Crepuscule," "Les Orientales," and 
" Les Rayons et Ombres." These and Beranger's 

69 



The Correspondence of 

" Chansons " and the best of Charles de Bernard, 
of George Sand, and Balzac seem to me the finest 
things, together with some of Lamennais, Edgar 
Quinet, Michelet, Thiers, and Thierry of the new 
school. But Paul Courier is perhaps greater than 
all, and I suppose Madame de Bonstetten will 
admire and like them all. 

I have got the whole of Gerald Griffin's ^ poetry, 
and swear by him at present, as well as by most 
of his prose. Did you or did you not like Mr. 
Bennett.-*- He went back with me from White- 
knights and stayed talking till half-past twelve, both 
forgetting how late it was. I wished for you, when 
you would have seen a fine mind thrown open, and 
shown him one quite as fine, adorned with the grace 
of manner which he wants. But I always wish for 
you when there is anything worth enjoying, and 
that, dear friend, is the measure of my opinion of 
you, as well as of my regard and affection. Some 
day or other I do hope we shall see more of each 
other — Shall we not ? This very evening my 
neighbours from Bear Wood are coming and Mr. 
Willmott, a most accomplished and admirable 

* All Irish dramatist, novelist, and poet (1803-40). 

= William Cox Bennett (1820-95) was a miscellaneous 
writer, and author of poems on children. Miss Mitford 
wrote to Mrs. Hoare in 1852 : " My friend, Mr. Bennett, 
besides being a very pleasing poet, is an eminent jeweller- 
watchmaker." He was a younger brother of Sir John 
Bennett, sheriff of London, who died in 1897. Cp. " Recol- 
lections of a Literary Life," iii, p. 94. 

70 



Mary Russell Mitford 

clergyman, author of a fine life of Jeremy Taylor, 
and of the Lives of the Sacred Poets ; one in whose 
charming conversation, and sweetness and purity of 
nature, one forgets the talent — so much is character 
above mere intellect. 

I wrote to Mr. Langford, the manager at Black- 
wood's London house, about you the very day after 
you went away. He is not professedly at all con- 
nected with the magazine, but is a literary man and 
so clever that his good word would tell. Do call 
on him in Paternoster Row. You are sure to like 
each other. 

I had a letter to-day from a sister of Charles 
Buller's about your books. She calls you Andersen's 
only translator. What you say of him is charming. 
I am so glad he has fallen into your hands. Have 
you seen my friend Mrs. Archer Clive's poem, 
" The Queen's Ball " ? ^ The subject is very 
striking — one hundred and fifty persons had been 
invited who are dead. I suppose they copied the 
last year's list. 

In the next letter Miss Mitford makes the 

^ Under the initial " V." Mrs. Clive published verses (1840) 
and a novel, " Paul FerroU " (1855). She was a friend of 
Florence Nightingale. She was born in 1801, and acci- 
dentally burnt to death in 1873. " Happy sister, happy 
mother, happy wife, she even bears the burdens of a large 
fortune and a great house without the slightest diminution of 
the delightful animal spirits which always seem to me to be 
of her many gifts the choicest," Miss Mitford wrote of her in 
" Recollections of a Literary Life," ii. 

71 



The Correspondence of 

first reference to the ill-health which was to 
pursue her to the end of her life. 

Wordsworth's daughter Dora (Mrs. 
Quillinan) died at Rydal in July, 1847, and 
in spite of Miss Mitford's assertion, her 
father mourned his ''immeasurable loss" 
during the remainder of his life. 

July ?; 1847, 
I don't think that you ever got a very long, very 
affectionate and very true letter, which a most 
charming one of yours prompted and which I sent 
by the post from Reading to Ratisbon. 

You can hear of Mrs. Haydon at Mr. Serjeant 
Talfourd's. I have not heard from her for a long 
time ; it being of course my sin, as you would well 
imagine. 

I need not tell you how glad I shall be to see you, 
but you will be sorry to find me exceedingly lame — 
lame ever since my rheumatism four months ago. I 
now take three hours for walking the distance that 
I used to accomplish in one ; and this hot weather 
renders exercise so fatiguing to me, that it is a 
misery to me to get about until the very last thing 
at night. If I had money to keep a little pony 
chaise, it would of course much lessen the incon- 
venience, but that is not likely to happen, for I have 
not sufficient and am never likely to have more. 
As it is, this affliction prevents my visiting London 

72 



Mary Russell Mitford 

this season as I had intended ; my recovery depend- 
ing, I am told, on the effect of warm weather and 
abstaining from fatigue. 

Mrs. Wordsworth will feel her daughter's death 
more than her husband. Miss Martineau was with 
him when the death of his brother was announced ; 
he cried at first, but within two hours was quite in 
his usual spirits. 

Boner was in England in the summer of 
1847, ^i^d often spent a day with Miss 
Mitford. In a letter to Mrs. Partridge, 
dated July 26th, Miss Mitford wrote : '' Mr. 
Boner, my favourite friend, and Andersen's 
best translator, has been in England and 
much here. He sent me the other day for 
dear Patty Lovejoy's album (she is a sweet 
little girl of eleven years old) an autograph 
of Spohr s, and one of Andersen's, and the 
latter is so pretty. . . . He (Andersen) is the 
lion of London this year — dukes, princes, 
and ministers are all disputing for an hour 
of his company ; and Mr. Boner says that he 
is perfectly unspoilt, as simple as a child, 
and with as much poetry in his every-day 
doings as in his prose." 



71 



The Correspondence of 

August 9, 1847. 

I do not know when I have been more heartily- 
provoked by anything than by our old enemy, the 
Great Western, which did not bring your most kind 
packet of autographs till you were fairly on your 
way to the Continent, so that my sincere and 
earnest thanks have to follow you all the way to 
Ratisbon. Most heartily do I thank you, and so 
do those who are almost as much obliged as myself; 
for, after all, you have done most for me, as you 
intended, by enabling me to give so much pleasure 
to those who are so kind to me. 

I was delighted to find Andersen writing such 
excellent English ; among other reasons because 
he will, I think, be capable of estimating the vast 
difference between his translator and his transla- 
tress, if one may so speak of the Danish-English 
doer-into of the German version of the books, for 
such, it is said, Mrs. Howitt is.^ I wrote the other 
day to Miss Skerrett ("the Queen's Miss Skerrett," 
who has so much to do in recommending^ books all 
through the Palace ; and who, herself a great Danish 
scholar, would be a good judge of the beauty of 
your versions), begging if the Danish stories were 
not in the royal nursery that she would place them 
there, which she says she will do. She tells me 

" Cf. "The Improvisatore," 2 vols., 1845, and "Only a 
Fiddler and Other Tales," 3 vols., 1845, both translated by 
Mrs. Howitt. 

74 



Mary Russell Mitford 

that, in addition to her multifarious occupations, she 
has been much tormented this year by the necessity 
of officiating as interpreter between a German maid 
and a French maid, belonging to the Queen, neither 
of whom knows a word of any language but her 
own. As Miss Skerrett is not going into Scotland 
with Her Majesty, the poor foreigners must get on 
how they can. She tells me that she saw Mrs. 
Trollope this spring, and thought her much aged ; 
grown thin, and changed in no common degree. 
Mrs. Trollope was going to Venice, to be there at 
the same time with some learned people — some 
association or other. 

Before I forget it, let me tell you that the name 
of the heroine of Wordsworth's fine classical poem 
is Laodamia. I think it was with you that I was 
speaking of that poem. Alfred Tennyson's new 
poem is a Commonwealth of Women — a man gains 
admission, and you can imagine the result ! ^ It is 
said to be good. William Harness told me that he 
met one day, at dinner, the Heroine of Locksley 
Hall and her husband, and he thought the lady had 
chosen wisely. 

Poor Mr. Walter died without a sigh. His son is 
in for Nottingham ;- Fox and George Thomson in 
— Bulwer, Hobhouse, and Roebuck out. I am sorry 
for Roebuck. 

By the way, the new M.P. for Oxford (city) is my 

^ "The Princess," published 1847. 

"" He was M.P. for Nottingham, 1847-59. 

75 



The Correspondence of 

friend William Wood,^ a great whig lawyer, and a 
man of splendid talent and admirable character, son 
of Sir Mathew, and known to all the ministers, so 
that there is a Solicitor-General found. Mr. Har- 
ness and Mr. Dyce have been spending a day here, 
and my literary news comes from them. Moore, 
although so entirely failing in intellect that he 
repeats the same question a dozen times, yet wrote 
the other day to offer twelve volumes of anecdotes 
and diary. They will of course be very interesting.^ 
I wrote the other day to Mrs. Browning's sister 
to ask her address, lamenting the long time that had 
intervened without my hearing from her, and she 
wrote me word that she had just had a similar letter 
from her, so a letter has been lost one way or the 
other. 

In the following letters Miss Mitford 
gossips about her health, her visitors, and 
the books she is reading, both French and 
English, and the news her friends tell her 
in their letters. 

Octobei II, 1847. 
Never doubt for an instant the vivid sympathy 

' William Page Wood (1801-81), Baron Hatherley, was 
appointed Solicitor-General in 1851 and Lord Chancellor 
in 1868. 

' Edited in 8 vols, by Lord John Russell, and published 
1853-6. 

76 



Mary Russell Mitford 

with which your feeHngs and occupations never fail 
to inspire me. I remember, myself, the strong 
admiration with which I read Dr. Arnold's Life 
and Letters, and that best and greatest of his 
works, the " Lectures on History." One of his 
correspondents (the Rev. Mr. Blackstone) is a 
friend and neighbour of mine, and you shall see him 
(D.V.) the first time I have the happiness of receiv- 
ing you here. He has the living of Heckfield, 
succeeding immediately to Mrs. Trollope's father, 
and inhabiting the pretty grounds and vicarage- 
house where the celebrated authoress was raised. 
He is also a clever man, but too bigoted a Church- 
man for my taste, and I always wondered how Dr. 
Arnold and he got on together : he is, besides, a 
grandson of the Judge. The last that I heard of 
poor Dr. Arnold's family was from a dear friend 
(John Kenyon) who was visiting Mr. Wordsworth, 
and he said that he met Mrs. Arnold and her 
children crossing a field by a country pathway in 
their deep mourning, and that it impressed him like 
a village funeral. I don't know whether this expres- 
sion strikes you, but to me it seemed at once a 
poem and a picture. 

Did you read the " Life and Letters of John 
Foster," the essayist and dissenting minister .'^^ I 
think that they struck me even more than the 
" Memoirs of Dr. Arnold," as belonging to a man, 
equally pious, but even more strikingly a thinker 
^ See note, p. 57. 
77 



The Correspondence of 

and of independence of character and conduct, and 
individuality the most marked and decided of any 
man of our day. He not only followed and courted 
no one, but he suffered nobody to court or follow 
him, and the contrast of his rigid economy, and his 
love of books and prints, his scornful resistance to 
editors and employers, and his delightful humility to 
his friend and rival, Robert Hall, above all those 
charminof letters to his obscure old widowed land- 
ladies, seemed to me more worthy of admiration 
than anything I have met with for a very long time. 
Both books have the great merit of biography, that 
of causing you quite to forget the biographer, and I 
think you would admit that the two men are worthy 
compeers both in character and in genius. 

I should also like you to read the "Life and 
Letters of Gerald Griffin," equally interesting in a 
different way. The story resembles that of Crabbe 
(you know, of course, the charming Life of the poet 
by his son), with much higher independence of char- 
acter. You shall read it when v/e meet, for I have 
got it, as well as his poems, two very choice volumes, 
and as " The Collegians " is also announced for the 
Parlour Library, I hope also to have that. He was 
a most remarkable writer, dying at thirty-six, a 
monk in an Irish monastery. 

Lamartine's book ^ is very striking indeed : all 
the people at the Palace, Lady Lyttelton, the sub- 
governess. Miss Skerrett, the Queen herself, who 

' " Histoire des Girondins," 1847. 
78 



Mary Russell Mitford 

reads so little, have been devouring it. Her 
Majesty had also written to Miss Skerrett from 
Scotland desiring her to procure Andersen's 
Memoirs in German. I have sent your transla- 
tions, with the Irish poems and Motherwell, to the 
Palace this very week ; so that I am sure yours will 
be the first English translation of Andersen that 
Her Majesty and the governesses will see, and I 
have no doubt but it will be followed by the pur- 
chase of the volumes. I wrote all about you 

if the Queen should be curious. 

Lamartine is very striking and very interesting, 
and I did not think that it was in him to write so 
great a book. He does injustice, crying injustice, 
to Napoleon, and is so much too candid towards 
most of the Revolutionary leaders, that reading of 
so many crimes and so many excuses for all parties, 
one is tempted to ask, who is to blame ? Never- 
theless it is a very great book. 

I am now reading Appert's ^ " Dix ans a la Cour 
de Louis Philippe," and am much amused by it. 
How was he ruined ? and what was he about in 
Prussia ? Tell me what you know of him, for one 
cannot help being interested for him, and one likes 
him for his way of talking of Napoleon, and 
Beranger, and Casimir Delavigne, and Arnault.- 

^ Benjamin Appert (1797-1847) became secretary to Queen 
Marie Amelie, consort of Louis Philippe, after the revolution 
of 1830. He travelled in Europe to study prison discipline. 

' Antoine Vincent Arnault (1766-1834), a French dramatist, 

79 



The Correspondence of 

What a shame to let him (Arnault) die in poverty 
and misery ! I have no faith in courts or princes, 
and doubt if one branch of the Bourbons be 
much better than the other. 

Did you read, in Jerrold's Magazine, Mrs. Acton 
Tindal's beautiful ballads ? ^ She is a dear friend of 
mine, and last week brought her husband to see me. 
They spent four days at the " Bear" in Reading, 
travelling from Aylesbury with their own horses, so 
that they were backward and forward here every 
, day. I never saw a handsomer or a happier couple 
— both elegant, gracious and full of gaiety and sen- 
sibility ; he is a fine athletic dark man of thirty-one 
or thirty-two, she a most sweet and lovely blonde 
of twenty-three or twenty-four. She had ;^2 5,000 
down, and will have much more, and he is only 
clerk of the peace for Buckinghamshire and partner 
to his father, a very rich solicitor of Aylesbury, so 
she might have done much better in a worldly point 
of view. But he is very well connected (nephew 
of the late Chief Justice) and of the highest char- 
acter ; altogether I have never seen two people so 
happy and so deserving of happiness. I think she 
will attain a great popularity. Her poems have 
force and finish of no common order, resembling 
the best and most picturesque of Mrs. Hemans's, 
without imitation, and with youth and healthiness. 

and author of some graceful fables. He played some part in 
the political events of his time. 

' Cf. " Recollections of a Literary Life," ii. 

80 



Mary Russell Mitford 

I should like to make you acquainted, and some 
day or other I hope to do so. Her poems are 
chiefly ballads on very graphic and interesting his- 
torical subjects, and there is a vein of devotional 
poetry, very fine because very true. Mr. D' Israeli 
was staying at their house for his election. ^ His 
clinging' to his own people is curious. His old con- 
stituents at Shrewsbury desired him to send down 
a candidate, and he did send the master of an old 
curiosity shop, a rich Jew broker, whom they have 

elected, together with my friend, Mr. . My 

maid says that fifteen years ago, when standing for 
High Wycombe, he had one hundred Jew boys 
from London to carry his flags. 

I am so lame still that I am compelled to get a 
pony chaise. God grant it do not send me to the 
Queen's Bench ! Next year you shall drive me 
about in it, will you? Is not this a long letter? 
Now you must write me one still longer, and send 
me a very plain, proper direction, and tell me what 
French books to read. Is Eugene Sue writing 
anything since "Martin"? or Balzac, or George 
Sand? or Victor Hugo? or Charles de Bernard? 
I read a clever imitation of "Gerfaut," lately, " Le 
Chien d'Alcibiade." Mrs. Browning says there 
are no new French books to be had at Florence. 
They are to winter at Rome. 

They have made me an honorary member of the 
Whittington Club,' in company with Joanna Baillie, 

* A club instituted at the " Crown and Anchor," Arundel 
F ^8i 



The Correspondence of 

Maria Edgeworth, Mrs. Somerville, and Leigh 
Hunt — only these five. This is a very great 
compliment. 

December i6, 1847. 
I write to you on my birthday, the day that 
seems to gather one nearer to those whom one 
loves and values ; and I send you all the good 
wishes that I know you would pour forth on your 
poor old friend on this her sixtieth birthday, if 
you did but know it. I hope and trust that you 
are better in Germany than we are in England. 
Influenza is in every house quite as a pestilence ; 
illness of every sort besides. For my own part I 
have been suffering all the autumn. But besides 
this, I have had a great affliction in the death of 
my dear old dog. You remember him, I am sure, 
with his bright auburn curls, dark and shining as 
the rind of the horse-chestnut, and the golden light 
that played over them in the sunbeams ! I am sure 
you remember my poor pretty favourite. But 
nothing but my long experience of his high 
qualities can convey a notion of his real value ; 
his sweetness, his gentleness, his affection, his 
over-estimate of kindness, his forgetfulness of 

Street, Strand, in 1846, under the auspices of Douglas 
Jerrold and other men of letters, to combine social and 
intellectual advantages at a subscription low enough to 
allow men and women of the middle class to join. It came 
to an end in 1873, and was then revived as the Temple Club, 
which is now also extinct. 

82 



Mary Russell Mitford 

wrong, his recollection of old friends, old servants, 
were most remarkable. 

At the end of three years he suddenly recognized 
a friend of mine who had been good to him. I 
cannot tell you how I miss him, and his sagacity 
was such as to make him really a companion ; his 
sagacity and sympathy — for that, I suppose, was 
the real charm after all — the loving where I loved. 
If you remember, he recognized you last year. 
The only alleviation to our loss is that he died 
without pain and without any of the infirmities of 
age, which if he had lived much longer he would, 
I fear, have suffered, for he was thirteen or four- 
teen years old. 

I have been thinking of you and talking of you 
lately, having been engaged (as indeed I still am) 
in makinof out a list of secular books for lendinor 
libraries for the poor. The young wife of a clergy- 
man, a girl of sense, wrote to me to say she could 
find no such list except of tracts and sermons ! so 
dear Mr. Lovejoy and I have fallen to work, and 
when we have completed our labour we shall send 
you a copy. We mean to set down the very best 
books (which are luckily the cheapest), upon the 
plan of Napoleon, who, you remember, in throw- 
ing open the theatres of Paris after a victory 
or a marriage, always chose a play of Corneille, 
or of Moliere, and always found his choice 
justified by the gratification and intelligence of 
the audience. 

83 



The Correspondence of 

Just as we were thinking of this subject William 
Chambers, of Edinburgh, came to pay me a visit, 
and has assisted us by a good deal of information 
and advice, such as getting parishes to agree and 
interchange their libraries. He says that the 
obstacles to all education in England and Scotland 
are the clergy. I am quite of that mind from my 
own experience, but I did not expect to hear him 
say so. He is a very superior person. He has 
persuaded Miss Edge worth to write a book for 
young people — remarkable, considering her age, 
for she must be turned of eighty, but still one that 
justifies my theory of not writing too long, inas- 
much as it reads just like an imitation of her 
own better works. It is called "Orlandino," and 
is a story of a lad reformed from drinking by a 
younger lad. 

Alfred Tennyson's poem, " The Princess, A 
Medley," is at last announced to be published in 
a few days : I am very anxious to see it. Thank 
you for your list, dear friend. I mean your French 
list. I am now reading M. de Barante's great book 
on the Dukes of Burgundy. Very captivating his- 
torians are these modern French writers, full of 
picture and colour, interesting you in the story 
of the country they write about, but whether (I 
am especially thinking of Lamartine now) they 
may give a very correct idea of the people is 
doubtful. Lamartine has a wonderful tendency to 
make his people better, so that one wonders (the 

84 



Mary Russell Mitford 

crimes having certainly been committed) who, 
according to him, was to blame. 

Is Eugene Sue writing now ? I have seen 
nothing of his since " Martin," and one cannot 
afford to lose the creator of Rigolette. Your books 
are still at Windsor Castle ; Miss Skerrett — herself 
an excellent Danish as well as German scholar — 
praises the translation greatly. Messrs. Grant and 
Griffith have just sent me your new volume of 
"Andersen." Thank you for it. 



85 



1848 



The group of letters for 1848 are of much 
interest. Miss Mitford writes of the bad 
state of her health, which, besides more or 
less chronic rheumatism, was now further 
harmed by an attack of influenza — which is 
no modern scourge — and the effects of a 
carriage accident. She shows her interest 
in French politics, and, like Mrs. Browning, 
declares herself a great admirer of Louis 
Napoleon. In the summer she spent a 
fortnight at Taplow, by way of change of 
air, and her description of the scenery and 
its associations recalls some of the most 
delightful passages of "Our Village." She 
reads a large number of old books and all 
the important new books, among them 
" Jane Eyre," and many are the specula- 
tions as to its authorship, Macaulay's " His- 
tory," and a variety of French works. Miss 
Mitford was only acquainted with German 

86 



Mary Russell Mitford 

literature through translations, but, even 
so, it is strange that she should never 
have appreciated it. She excepts Schiller 
and Goethe, but finds all the rest " poor, 
bald, coarse, without life or character or 
power " ; even Auerbach, who is really the 
originator of the so-called "kailyard" school 
of writers, she contemns, and quotes a criti- 
cism she has heard and with which she is 
in full agreement, that German authors 
have been made sufficiently known in Eng- 
land to demolish their reputation. It is 
a curious prejudice, and one that still 
prevails in many quarters. 

February 28, 1848. 
I hope that you have before now got a long 
letter which I wrote and kept in the house, wait- 
ing myself to go into Reading, and at last sent 
off rather suddenly. At all events I am sure 
you would not doubt the reality of my friendship 
and affection. I am no very punctual corre- 
spondent, but I am a very constant person in my 
attachments, and you cannot get quit of my regard 
for you if you were to try. For the rest, I did 
not answer your last note until now, because I 
had nothing to say that would have given you 
pleasure. This has been the most unhealthy 

87 



The Correspondence of 

winter that I ever remember — wet, damp, showery, 
vapoury, thoroughly trying. Accordingly I have 
paid the common penalty, and been miserably ill 
of the sort of low fever which has been called 
influenza. I am now recovering, but it weakens 
people bodily and affects the spirits, strength, and 
appetite more than can be imagined. However, 
so many old friends have died that I suppose I 
am fortunate to have weathered the storm. 

Last week arrived the pretty volume called 
" Charles Boner's Book." Thank you much for it. 
I like best the "Toe and Finger" story. But I 
want to suggest to you for next year what I am 
sure you would do well and what would I think 
please. You live among children abroad — write a 
journal (true or false as you like, when the writer is 
a real artist the false is the true) of the sayings 
and doings of children abroad, putting as little or as 
much of story as you like. You will see that this 
will have much that is new and piquant, will admit 
of almost any poem or tale that you may wish to 
introduce, whether of your own or of Andersen's, 
avoiding any collision with other translators, and 
preserving a sort of oneness which books of 
detached pieces want. Think of this. I foresee 
that the Andersen and Fairy Tale fashion will not 
last ; none of these things away from general nature 
do. There is, after all, a sameness and a poverty 
in all that does not belong to our common kind 
which never really sustains itself. Two or three of 

88 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Andersen's stories, such as "The Ugly Duckling " 
(in spite of its hideous title), will last for ever, like 
Undine, but as a class they will soon go down, 
sooner in our country than anywhere else. 

Forgive this frank expression of opinion, dearest 
friend. I would not take such a liberty except in 
writing to one whom I esteem so much. Try what 
you can do with scenery and character and manners 
as you see them. Descriptions, for instance, of an 
artist's studio at Munich — the thousand things to 
which intellisrent children would be taken in 
Germany — would afford better material for a child's 
book than all the fairy tales that were ever devised. 
I had a talk over the matter with Mr. Griffith, who 
agreed with me that Andersen would certainly not 
last as a child's classic. He mixes a satire which 
is neither within their comprehension nor desirable 
if it were. Try to deal with real scenery and 
human affections. At all events think of this. 

Are you coming to London this year ? Let me 
know as soon as you know yourself, because I 
should like to go to a French play with you. I 
have an old friend coming to lodge in the village 
for a month who has spent the last twenty years in 
France with her husband, she having been goose 
enough to marry a Frenchman much younger than 
herself. They are now parted after years of misery 
and a great sacrifice of income. I had thought of 
going to her, to Paris and Fontainebleau, this next 
autumn and winter, but what will come of this 

89 



The Correspondence of 

revolution God knows. One is lucky not to be 
there now. You have been having the same sort 
of affair in a smaller way. Tell me anything you 
know of the Parisian doings. 

Lamartine's has been a curious career. Who 
after watching his rise as a sort of sacred poet (I 
always detected the mixture of cant and finery in 
his verses), and then as a sort of Exeter Hall 
speaker, would have expected him to come forth 
either with a revolutionary book (for an apology for 
the heroes of the Revolution it is) or as a revo- 
lutionary hero? Do you know much of Louis 
Blanc.'' I hope some of them are sincere, but 
really one doubts. 

I have not heard from Mrs. Browning for three 
or four months. 

We have a very clever novel called " Jane 
Eyre," by a new writer. He calls himself Currer 
Bell, but one does not know whether that be his 
real name. 

After all, Lamartine is a remarkable man ; to 
write so well and to speak so well is something 
rare. 

April, 1848. 
Ten thousand thanks for your kind and inter- 
esting letter. I still think that a well-executed, 
natural, cheerful children's journal in Germany 
would sell, or a set of stories on German History, 
like the " Tales of a Grandfather," and the same 

90 



Mary Russell Mitford 

thing from French History (if not done before), 
would be charming. Think of these things and 
attend to the idiom. A great admirer of yours, 
a very pretty young friend of mine, showed me the 
other day that you had two or three times called a 
bird, clearly the mother of the family, he. Do you 
think in English ? That looks as if you did not. 
If ever people get to read thoughtful poetry I 
think that yours will do you honour, but I doubt if 
ever they will. You may rely upon it that very 
few people read Wordsworth, although it is the 
fashion to praise him. 

The last thing I read of Andersen's was his 
*' Autobiography," and between the vanity of the 
writer, and the baldness and poverty of the transla- 
tion, I was completely disgusted. I did not think 
it possible to so entirely do away with the interest 
of the rise of a poor boy into intellectual eminence. 
But he has no sympathy with his own order — he is 
essentially a toad-eater, a hanger-on in great houses, 
like the led captains of former days, a man who 
values his acquaintances for their rank and their 
riches and their importance in the world ; not one 
who, like you, fills with honour and independence 
the most honourable and useful part in a great 
family, but one who uses fame merely as a key to 
open drawing-room doors, a ladder to climb to high 
places. Of all living writers the one most free from 
this fault is B^ranger, and at his feet one could cast 
oneself in admiration. But I doubt Andersen, and 

91 



The Correspondence of 

in a different way (for the sin and weakness of am- 
bition) I doubt Lamartine. I have been hearing a 
great deal of him lately from an English lady who 
has lived twenty years in France and is just returned 
here. She was intimate with his wife, and speaks 
of him as a man of very distinguished appearance, 
but cold and almost repulsive manners. He carries 
out his fancies so far as to have two servants who 
had been condemned to death. If for political 
offences that is well, but I should hardly sympathize 
with murderers for butlers and footmen — would 
you ? She, my neighbour, was also intimate with 

Arago I and Cavaignac,^ and M. , editor of the 

" National," used to act with her in plays of her 
own writing, when professor of history at a pro- 
vincial school. Truly this is the age of the Press ! 

Mind and let me know if you do come to 
England. The weather here is abominable. We 
have not had two fine days for the last two months, 
which prevents my gaining strength. 

I think of you often and always with the most 
affectionate interest. 

May 9, 1848. 

I begin answering your affectionate and charming 

^ Francois Jean Dominique Arago (1786-1853) astronomer 
and physicist, played a prominent part in the revolutions 
of 1830 and 1848. 

' Louis Eugene Cavaignac (1802-57), was Minister of War 
in 1848 and quelled the June insurrection. He contested the 
Presidency of the Republic with Louis Napoleon, and never 
acknowledged the Empire. 

92 



Mary Russell Mitford 

letter the moment I receive it. I wish you were 
here to drive me again where I spent yesterday — 
to the woods of Silchester ; weather such as you 
describe, villages smiling, with gardens and 
orchards in flower, horse-chestnuts standing out 
with great wild cherry-trees from the beech and 
oak woods ; and under one's feet wood-sorrel, 
wood-anemone, wild hyacinth, Solomon's seal, and 
lily of the valley. 

Nevertheless, so nervous and poorly am I still, 
that the good done me by the air, and the loveli- 
ness of the scenery, was almost counterbalanced 
by the shying of the pony as I came home, 
although I was driven by a steady old coachman ; 
but you would have been a companion and a friend, 
as well as a good driver, and we should have 
talked of too many things to have allowed me time 
to be frightened. I don't know if I have written 
to you since I had that providential escape from a 
vicious pony, who kicked two carriages to pieces 
the same afternoon ; in the first of which I was 
saved only by the courage of my brave and faith- 
ful little maid : so that the fear is not quite 
unnatural, when combined with great physical 
weakness, for I am still very poorly. However, 
we must hope. 

Everything in nature here is most lovely ; I 
never saw so much blossom, or heard so many 
nightingales, and I have longed for you to listen 
by my side to two in our own garden, which answer 

93 



The Correspondence of 

one another all night long. Now let me tell you 
that I am hopeful the papers are mistaken about 
Mr. Wordsworth. I have asked of many persons 
who ought to know, but they all say they know 
nothing, but I had the other day a letter from 
Keswick, from his and my friend John Ruskin, 
who mentions him incidentally, without a hint as 
to the "mental imbecility" that has gone the round 
of the Press. He says " Even Wordsworth does 
not understand Switzerland." I am sure Mr. 
Wordsworth might retort and say — " John Ruskin 
does not understand Cumberland Lakes, for he 
calls them vile bits of woodland and pools of dirty 
water " ; but then the charming Oxford graduate 
is in a passion. These revolutions have stopped 
his travels, and put him out of sorts. Tell your 
charming princess how flattering is the interest 
she feels in me, and how earnest and sincere are 
my good wishes for her health and happiness. 

Tell me of your sister. I envy any one who 
has born friends. I was always an only child, and 
always longed for a brother, and now I have only 
a few distant relatives — most of them too grand 
to claim. One whom I saw the other day, after 
thirty years' absence (a niece of the late Duke of 
Athole, and my second cousin), seemed a pleasant, 
frank, open-countenanced person, and probably 
poorer than myself. Yet I felt all the time I was 
talking to my fair visitor, how very little we had 
in common, and how wise had been the rule which 

94 



Mary Russell Mitford 

had withheld me from making or even meeting 
the advances of far greater people — the Bedfords, 
Greys, etc., to whom I am very remotely, but still 
lineally, allied, and who have the reputation of 
great kindness. Perhaps this is more truly pride 
than poor dear Andersen's, but it is at all events 
much safer. 

Does not France seem in a more hopeful con- 
dition .-* I think so. The people have behaved so 
well. There has been litde bloodshed and no 
irreverence. God grant the end may be for the 
peaceful happiness of all nations ! Here there is 
so strong a manifestation in favour of an enlarged 
franchise, that it must, I think, take place. The 
"Times" says so, and you know they generally 
know which way the wind sets. I myself should 
like an educational test, but it will probably end 
in household suffrage and the ballot. 

In Ireland the sufferings are terrible. The worst 
cases are wisely kept out of the papers, but a most 
enlightened friend of mine just returned thence, 
says that they have been driven into such a strait 
by famine, as men in a boat at sea ; that parents 
have been found over a pot where their own child 
was the food, and that a relation of his own, an 
assistant barrister, tried two boys for putting their 
younger sisters in a bog-hole, to seize themselves 
on the little portion of meal doled out to them ! ! 
Fancy such facts as these in a Christian land! 
Nobody seems to see a remedy. The real one 

95 



The Correspondence of 

would be for all great proprietors, whig, tory, or 
radical, to lay aside politics, to live upon their 
estates, cultivate the waste lands, and educate 
these poor misguided people into faith in their 
fellows. 

Yes, your critic is a pretty little girl, and a very 
clever one ; full of prejudice as an egg is full of 
meat, but racy, original, and ambitious. She is 
at present working hard at the classics, and very 
angry with me for meeting her raptures about 
Cicero with bits of " Les Mysteres de Rome," 
which I happen to be reading. I have no love 
for the Romans ; the Greeks, if you will, were a 
great people. 

We have two very beautiful books — "The 
Female Poets" by Mrs. Frederick Rowton,^ a 
most charming volume. The most large and 
generous criticism, and the best selection that I 
have ever seen. It is superbly got up too, and will 
be a standard work. The other is Forster's (of the 
" Examiner ") " Life of Goldsmith," ^ which, if it 
were not one-third too long, would be charming. 
What is curious is, that over and over again the 
biographer praises his hero for the absence of 
superfluous phrases. Then we have a very striking 
volume, " The Autobiography of a Working Man " 

' Miss Mitford is in error here. The compiler is Frederic 
Rowton, and his book is entitled " The Female Poets of 
Great Britain." 

' " Life and Times of Goldsmith," by John Forster, 
1848. 

96 



Mary Russell Mitford 

(Alexander Somerville,^ the soldier who was 
flogged), as graphic as Defoe, and a very safe 
and sound politician. Also I have read (at your 
recommendation) George Sand's " Francois le 
Champi." It is charming. She is at present 
the fashionable foreip^n writer in E norland. . . . 
It is so good in such a one as you to care for 
an old woman like me. 

I meant to have gone to London this spring, 
but I have not strength for the journey. You 
would hardly believe how feeble I am become, and 
how soon tired by exercise and conversation. 

When Mrs. Browning heard of Miss 
Mitford's continued ill-health she advised 
her to try a change of air : " Turn your dear 
face toward the seaside ; somewhere where 
you can have warm sea-bathing and sea air." 
Miss Mitford took as much of this advice as 
her doctor thought right and went for a 
fortnight to Taplow. She gives a charming 
description of her little holiday, in which she 
explored that corner of Bucks with its 
many literary associations, in the chapter 
entitled "Authors Associated with Places," 

^ Alexander Somerville (1811-85) was the son of a Lothian 
carpenter and wrote on Corn Law Reform and other 
economic subjects. He collected facts for Cobden. 

G 97 



The Correspondence of 

in her " Recollections of a Literary Life."^ 
In the letter to Boner she treats the same 
subject in a more familiar tone. 

August 25, 1848. 
I do not know when any letter has given me so 
much pain and so much pleasure as the one I have 
just received from you. The pain, because you 
have been so ill, the pleasure from a thousand 
causes — gladness that you are recovering, delight 
in your kindness — and pride, an aunt-like, almost 
mother-like pride, in yourself I am quite without 
near relatives, and make my dearest and choicest 
friends serve instead as resting-places to my affec- 
tions ; and you and the sister whom you love so 
well must pardon me for claiming you amongst 
those whom my judgment and my affection com- 
bine to place very, very near the head of the 
list. Thank you for all that you tell me of that 
dear sister. I have long remarked that amongst 
the most ripening and improving of womanly 
tendernesses is that of an elder sister, especially 
when the object to be cared for is a brother, and all 
that you tell me of Miss Boner is so admirable, and 
falls in so well with the theory founded on previous 
observations, that I seem to know her almost as 
well as I know you. If it please God to spare me 
a few years, I hope that I shall know her personally, 
for surely when you return to England she will not 

» Cf. vol. i. 
98 



Mary Russell Mitford 

remain abroad, and then I do hope she will come 
with you to my poor cottage. If she do not, I 
shall ask you to take me to see her. Tell her this, 
and tell her I am determined to win a little bit of 
her heart if only by our mutual appreciation of you. 
That must be my claim to her regard. 

Thank you for your most kind enquiries after my 
health. It continues bad. About a month ago I 
betook myself to Taplow, close to Maidenhead, 
from which lovely spot I am just returned. Do 
you know it } I had the pleasantest lodging 
possible, in a cottage close to the Thames. My 
rooms opened into a garden full of trees and 
flowers, which stretched down to the river. We 
had even our own little terrace, and landing-place, 
and stairs to the river. Just below us the fine old 
bridge, and above the magnificent woods of 
Cliefden. There cannot be a prettier spot. The 
Thames was all alive with gay pleasure-boats, 
barges, and graceful processions of swans with their 
young cygnets. A friend from London, a young 
man of great talent and still greater kindness, came 
to meet me there. He lodged at an inn in the 
town, and came every day at one or two o'clock to 
drive me to different places. 

We went to Dropmore, the beautiful gardens 
created by Lord Granville ; to Ockwells, a most 
curious and beautiful house of Henry the Sixth's 
day ; to Lady Place, in the vaults of which the 
Whig lords concerted the Revolution of 1688 — I 

99 



The Correspondence of 

went into the recess where the famous letter to the 
Prince of Orange was written and signed ; to CHef- 
den — " Cliefden's proud alcove " — where, although 
the house is new, the terrace remains just as it was 
when the Countess of Shrewsbury held her lover's 
horse while he fought and slew her husband : — to 
Beaconsfield, to trace all that the fire had spared of 
Burke's house : the foundation, the well, some outer 
walls, the stables, and the grove in which he was 
accustomed to walk. 

N.B. — I affronted the people at Beaconsfield by 
not going on pilgrimage to Waller's house (I saw 
his monument in the churchyard when I went to 
the church to see Burke's), but I worship no false 
gods, and we know that if he were alive now he 
would not get into a magazine ; and he lived in the 
great age of lyric poetry, the age of Ben Jonson, of 
Beaumont and of Fletcher, of Wither, of Crashaw, 
of Herrick, of Lovelace, of Montrose, of Suckling, 
of Milton, of Dryden. 

Then I visited the stalwart yeoman, who at eight 
months old served as the model of Sir Joshua's 
*' Infant Hercules." He is as fine and Herculean 
an Englishman now as ever one beheld. I cannot 
help telling you that there, in that old-fashioned 
Buckinghamshire farm-house, I found a print of 
my own cottage. To Chalfont St. Giles, where the 
house to which Milton retired from the plague 
remains almost, I should think, as the great poet 
left it. To Stoke Poges and Upton Church to 

100 



Mary Russell Mitford 

visit the haunts and home and grave of Gray — two 
parties were there on the same errand — I mean at 
Stoke — one copying the unrivalled epitaph written 
by him, the other sketching the quaint old church. 
Twice to Windsor, once for the castle and chapel, 
which I had often seen, once to Heme's Oak, a 
ghost of a tree, which I had never seen before ; 
and three times to Burnham Beeches, for their own 
matchless beauty. They fully deserve their reputa- 
tion. Fancy six hundred acres of ground finely 
diversified by dells and declivities, now consisting 
of the finest turf, now clothed with splendid fern, 
holly, and juniper bushes, and over all scattered 
those gigantic pollards, mostly hollow, but crowned 
with such masses of verdure, that nothing but 
seeing them could make one believe that such mere 
shells could support such luxuriant vegetation ; and 
then their size, and the masses in which their roots 
wreathe themselves above the turf to the distance 
of many yards. They are marvellous. 

The Grotes have a country house close by, a 
small, unostentatious house, that does honour to the 
simple habits and refined taste of that elegant 
scholar and excellent man. Mrs. Grote erected a 
monument to Mendelssohn, a tombstone — a head- 
stone — in the middle of a place worn bare by 
picnickers, whither, as appears from some stanzas 
of her inditing, the great composer accompanied 
her. The verses are not bad, but the whole has 
the oddest effect possible. Besides doing all this, I 

lOI 



The Correspondence of 

used to go every evening into the Taplow woods by 
the river, or sometimes on the river, and enjoyed all 
this beauty very much. 

But I can hardly say that I am much better for 
the journey. Moreover, my dear faithful little maid 
caught cold on our return, and is at this moment 
very ill with sore throat, and I am in a great 
anxiety about her. Well, I will not pester you any 
longer with my troubles. 

John Ruskin, the Oxford graduate, is a very 
elegant and distinguished-looking young man, tall, 
fair, and slender — too slender, for there is a con- 
sumptive look, and I fear a consumptive tendency — 
the only cause of grief that he has ever given to his 
parents. He must be, I suppose, twenty-six or 
twenty-seven, but he looks much younger, and has 
a gentle playfulness — a sort of pretty waywardness, 
that is quite charming. 

He took a fancy to my writings as you did, and 
came to see me by the introduction of our dear 
friend Mrs. Cockburn (the Mary Duff of Lord 
Byron), and now we write to each other, and I 
hope love each other as you and I do. He passed 
a fortnight at Keswick, but did not see Words- 
worth, although Wordsworth and he had often 
met in London. The family did not seem to wish 
it, he said, and in short both he and I feared there 
must have been some truth in reports about the 
decline of intellect of the Bard of Rydal Mount. 

I02 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Nevertheless, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd has just dedi- 
cated to him his " Final Memorials of Charles 
Lamb." Two volumes of letters, containing such 
as could not, for the tragedy they tell, be pub- 
lished until the death of Miss Lamb, and others 
which, for a contrary reason — their comedy — were 
necessarily suppressed until poor simple George 
Dyer was safe under ground. Nothing can be 
better than Lamb's share of these volumes. I 
can't say so much for the Serjeant's. Bulwer has 
published a novel (" Harold, the Last Saxon King "), 
very dull as a tale, but good as history, doing 
justice to Harold and on William. By the way, 
William Smith, I of the Inner Temple, sent me the 
other day a volume of tragedies, one of which, 
"Athelwold," is very fine. Do you know him.-^ 
I never heard the name before. 

Now that there is an end of the acted drama, 
people are writing fine plays. 

Mr. Kingsley (almost a neighbour of mine) has 
just written a fine dramatic poem on the story of 
Elizabeth of Hungary, called the " Saint's 
Tragedy " ; and another neighbour, whose father 
and mother I know well, has just written the 
Oxford prize poem, "Columbus in Chains." It is 
very elegant, and I rejoice at it, for all their sakes. 
His father, the Rev. C. Blackstone, was a friend 
and correspondent of Dr. Arnold. The author of 

' William Henry Smith (1808-72), the philosopher and 
poet, and friend of Maurice, Sterhng, and Mill. 

103 



The Correspondence of 

"Jane Eyre " (believed to be a governess, and to 
have been brought up at the estabHshment of 
Carus Wilson) has published another novel. 

September 24, 1848. 

Thank you very heartily for your most interesting 
and welcome letter. The more welcome that it 
conveyed so good an account of your own im- 
proving health. Mine continues much as it was, 
except that I think myself a little better within 
these few days. But I vary so much, that I am 
almost afraid to say so ; the rather, that my good 
little maid observes, that whenever I "brag" of 
myself, as she calls it, I am sure to fall back 
almost directly. However, I do all I can to 
become stronger, and must hope that at last 
strength will come. 

This last month has been delicious as to weather, 
and I have crept out in the sunny afternoons, and 
have sat on the fallen trees in the woody lanes on 
the furzy commons, reading almost till sunset. Air 
to me is really life, and I cannot understand how 
any one can live in a town. Your verses gave 
me great pleasure. It is a charming accomplish- 
ment. I wish Mr. could be content to 

think so : he wears out every subject, pelts every- 
body with sonnets, and works at a poetical repu- 
tation as a woodcutter at making: a fagfo-ot. Of 
course this not only does his subject no good, but 
great harm ; besides quite destroying the self- 

104 



Mary Russell Mitford 

respect, which ought to be more to a man of 
sense and virtue than all the poetry in the world. 

At Maidenhead there is a Mr. Noel,^ a first 
cousin of Lady Byron's, shy and in ill-health, who 
never came to see me when I was in his neigh- 
bourhood, but who sent me his poems, and has 
written to me once or twice a week ever since. 
One or two of his poems are exquisite. I was 
showing them the other day to my neighbour, 
Mr. Blackstone (the friend and correspondent of 
Dr. Arnold, as well as the grandson of the judge, 
and father of the young man whose " Columbus 
in Chains " has just got the prize at Oxford), and 
he observed very truly how fine a book might 
be made from the poets the world had never 
found out. Many of our old poets, Herrick, for 
instance, have only recently won their reputation. 
Of one thing I am sure, that a fidgety impatience 
like Mr. s only retards the object. 

I have just been reading Auerbach's " Village 
Tales," translated by Meta Taylor, and they seem 
to me so utterly worthless, that I cannot help 

' Thomas Noel (1799-1861), author of the song "Rocked 
in the cradle of the deep." " Mr. Noel resides in a beautiful 
place in that beautiful neighbourhood [Taplow], leading the 
life of an accomplished but somewhat secluded country 
gentleman — a most enviable life and one well adapted to the 
observation of nature and to the production of poetry, but 
by no means so well calculated to make a volume of poems 
extensively known." (Cf. M. R. Mitford, " Recollections of a 
Literary Life," 1852, i, p. 51.) 

105 



The Correspondence of 

begging you to be very sure of the Maximilian 
ballads before giving yourself the trouble of trans- 
lating them. Write a nice prose book, dear 
friend, as little German in its tone as possible, 
about the real world, even if that real world be 
Germany, and avoid those hideous nicknames of 
which these stories are full, as well as their in- 
credible childishness. I am quite sure that this 
style of writing will never do in England — it has no 
vitality. You are born for better things. It is my 
conviction of this, and my earnest desire for your 
success, that makes me take the liberty of speaking 
so freely. The only thing that struck me in that 
long, worthless volume (which I read only on your 
account) was an assertion about the usual number 
of a peasant's family, " the customary three 
children." Are the Germans wise enough to 
follow this good Malthusian limitation.? If so, it 
really accounts for their comparative prosperity. 

I have been reading the " Life and Letters of 
Dr. Channing," ^ a very long book, where one seems 
perpetually in presence of a sermon. I know 
nothing in biography so grave and so ethical ; and 
yet it is ungrateful in me to say a word against 
one who speaks so kindly of me. I do not mean 
to say a word against the man ; it is his biographer's 
fault that the book is so heavy. On one point I 
have intense sympathy with Dr. Channing, his 
admiration of " Blanco White." 

' By his nephew, W. H. Channing, 3 vols., 1848. 
106 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Daniel O'Connell's secretary has published 
a delightful two volumes, " Recollections of 
O'Connell." ^ It is as full of story and character 
as Boswell's " Life of Johnson." I have also 
been reading some Puseyite novels, of which the 
authors seem to me to be mad enough for Bedlam. 
Fancy one (a Mr. Paget) gravely proposing that 
all the money usually spent in London during the 
season should be given the bishops for the use of 
Holy Church! ! ! 

Thank you for the list of French books. Mrs. 
Browning and her husband are still at Florence. 
I don't think either of them has written anything 
since their marriage. I am expecting to-morrow 
a friend from the neighbourhood of Bergholt ; not 
Lady Morton (Mr. Godfrey's widow), but Mrs. 
Cox, of Lowford, a mutual friend of hers and mine. 
Lady Morton is also my friend and correspondent 
and loves to talk of her son's place as being 
ennobled by its being the scene of so many of 
Constable's pictures. 

Forgive the bad writing ; a recumbent position 
is so much advised, that I write in bed. 

December i6, 1848. 
Your delightful letter was the first thing that 
greeted my eyes this Saturday morning, the i6th 

' *' Personal Recollections of O'Connell," by W. J. O'Neill 
Daunt, 3 vols., 1848. 

107 



The Correspondence of 

of December, and on this same day I sit down 
to bless you for it from the bottom of my heart. 
I am sixty-one years old to-day. I have never 
been much of a birthday keeper — partly because 
we were always a very small family, my father 
and mother and myself ; partly because I early 
learnt to think how sad anniversaries might become 
when they only reminded the survivors of dear 
friends dead and gone ! However, you have 
found a way to sweeten those sad memories, and 
twenty times to-day with the recollection of my 
dear father's bright smile and hearty voice, I 
have thought how very much he would have joined 
in my affection for you, with what a keen gratitude 
he would have appreciated your kindness, and 
how fine a specimen of manhood in youth and 
in age each would have thought the other. 

As it is, I have one female friend come to see 
me, who is at this instant drying herself from the 
pouring rain — a lovely woman, still young in mind 
and person, although turned of forty ; and three 
or four old servants (four indeed), who have come 
in twenty miles " for auld lang syne " ; one of 
them, who has brought his fiddle, is playing that 
tune at this instant, to the enchantment of my 
faithful K.'s sweet little boy. It is something 
to be surrounded by household ties and homely 
sympathies. K. has lived with me off and on 
for half a score years, and will stay with me as long 
as we shall both be spared, and the other servants 

1 08 



Mary Russell Mitford 

lived with us still longer. The one is the 
admirable gardener of the great inn at Salt Hill, 
who, after living with us for fifteen years, married 
a young woman who had lived with me nearly as 
long as my own personal servant, and who is 
really the very model of an intelligent and 
cultivated man of the people, one in whom the 
process of self-education has turned to nothing but 
good. I am very proud of John Lediard and his 
ofood little wife. I went to see them this summer, 
and have never met with a nicer specimen of skill 
and industry and true English comfort than in his 
garden and his home. 

Now good-bye till to-morrow. 

Monday, i8th. 

Now let me tell you what you will be glad 
to hear, that I am really better, although the 
complaint is one of the most fluctuating, and may 
at any time return in full intensity. However, 
I am certainly better just now, stronger as far 
as walking is concerned, although still unable 
to bear company or excitement. I have not 
spent an evening out for above a twelvemonth, and 
I do not think I shall ever be equal to that sort 
of exertion again. I am very thankful to be as 
I am now, able to take a walk, to call upon an 
old friend, and then to come home and lie down 
and read quietly during the greater part of the 
night. Dr. May admits that my complaint will 

109 



The Correspondence of 

always recur upon over-exertion or over-excite- 
ment, indeed, upon any excitement or fatigue, 
but I must be careful ; and there is this hope 
that another year may be better, that this one has 
been among the most generally unhealthy ever 
known in England. The hospital surgeons all 
observe that wounds do not heal, and have almost 
feared to perform operations on that account. 

I do not know whether the papers remarked 
what a friend who keeps a meteorological journal 
(is that long word rightly spelt.'*) told me the 
other day, that the two very remarkable displays 
of the northern lights that have been seen here in 
this century, took place on the two ni^l.ts pre- 
ceding the flight of Louis Philippe and the Pope. 
You remember the remarkable meteors that pre- 
ceded the battle of Ivry. My friend had written 
this account of those lights (I saw it myself, and 
it was magnificent) before hearing of either event. 
Then there is Mr. Fleming's book on the Papacy 
printed in 1701 (I have seen one of the old 
edition),! foretelling its downfall in 1794, in 1848, 
and in 2000. These things are curious. 

What is to be the end of the German revolu- 
tion } I am glad to see Louis Napoleon where 
he is. Not merely because he is the nephew of his 
uncle, but because he will have Thiers 2 and Barrot, 

' '* On the Rise and Fall of the Papacy," printed in " Dis- 
courses on Several Subjects," 1701. 

3 Miss Mitford changed her opinion of Thiers later. 

no 



Mary Russell Mitford 

two of the best heads in France, to guide his 
councils. I know several persons who used to see 
much of him in England, and they all say that he 
is a most amiable, unaffected, unassuming person, 
without Napoleon's genius, but with much of his 
charm. Vogue la galere I I can't help hoping 
that he may turn out as Octavius did. Certainly 
the cases are remarkably alike at this moment. 

Have you read Lamartine's " Trois Mois au 
Pouvoir " ? If not, do. It is a curiosity of self- 
glorification and national flattery, so made up of 
fine phrases "full of sound and fury signifying 
nothing," that one would think it the publication 
of an enemy. 

The political writer that I delight in is Cormenin,^ 
who seems to me the very king of pamphleteers, the 
worthy successor of Paul Louis Courier and his 
great predecessor, Beaumarchais. 

Macaulay's " History of James the Second," just 
printed, is exquisite. Certainly he is our greatest 
living writer, take him for prose or verse. Don't 
you think so } 

I have been looking over a quantity of transla- 
tions from the German lately, dearest friend, and 
really I cannot get on with them. They all seem 
to me (except of course Schiller and Goethe, espe- 
cially the first) incomplete as art ; poor, bald, coarse, 

' Louis Marie de la Haye Cormenin, 1788-1868. His 
works were immensely popular, as many as 60,000 copies 
of a pamphlet by him being rapidly sold. 

Ill 



The Correspondence of 

without life or character or power. The French 
have faults in plenty, but then look at their vivid- 
ness, their artistic truth, their marvellous detail, 
their life and power. To be sure, I read them in 
the original, and the German in translations, but the 
first time I read " The Mysteries of Paris " (and I 
am far from thinking Eugene Sue the equal of 
Balzac and George Sand, or even of Charles de 
Bernard) it was a vile American version, yet I saw 
there all the truth and beauty of Rigolette, that 
fresh bit of nature, and the admirable manage- 
ment of the details. 

I read a great deal of Uhland and of your Count 
Auersperg,^ and I confess I do not think anything 
will make them popular in England. Just compare 
their ballads with those of Schiller. It may be 
merely individual taste, but my impression is that 
the English public cares only for the rationalist 
divines — people do read them either for agreement 
or for difference ; but with regard to other German 
authors, I found a criticism the other day which 
seems to me to be true, that they have been 
made sufficiently known in England to demolish 
their reputation. 

I was amused in reading Carlyle's " Life of 
Schiller " to see how much less German his style 
was in that book than now. He wrote the other 

' Anton Alexander, Graf von Auersperg (1806-76), was 
an Austrian poet who wrote under the name of Anastasius 
Griin. 

112 



Mary Russell Mitford 

day a character of poor Charles Buller, more out- 
landish than was ever put forth by a man born 
within the four seas. Poor Charles Buller ! he 
is lamented as few men ever have been. I know 
his sister well, a singularly clever and charming 
person. 

I trust that your sister is well, and that you will 
long be spared to each other. I saw the other day 
the handsome gipsy who foretold a happy destiny 
to you and to those whom you love. 
Is Balzac married to a rich woman ? ^ 
Milnes's " Life of Keats" is excellent. He did 
not die of the " Quarterly," but bore it bravely, 
and was attended to the last by the most devoted 
friendship. 

^ Balzac married Madame Hanska in 1850, only three 
months before his death. 



H 113 



1849 



Miss Mitford projected a visit to Paris 
in the spring of 1849, Henry Chorley to be 
of the party, but eventually the expedition 
was abandoned. It is interesting to find 
her confessing that in spite of her literary 
knowledge of the French language she does 
not suppose she will be able to speak a word. 
It is a condition well known to those who 
have not learnt a language colloquially. 
Another project that held her mind at this 
period was the writing of her autobio- 
graphy, one likewise never carried out, 
except in so far as the autobiographical 
passages scattered through her " Recollec- 
tions of a Literary Life" are concerned. 

Among the interesting people Miss Mit- 
ford met this year were Richard Cobden 
and his wife. She was already an admirer 
of Cobden's views and great work, and was 

much impressed with him and charmed 

114 




RICHARD COBDEN, 1849. 
From the painting by George Patten, A.R.A. 



To face p. 114. 



Mary Russell Mitford 

with his wife when she saw them face to 
face. Although Miss Mitford nowhere 
makes confession of her political creed, it 
is abundantly clear from her letters that 
she upheld liberal principles, supported 
religious tolerance, and advocated the edu- 
cation of the people. 

Her reading this year includes books 
on and by Mirabeau, whom she eulogizes, 
and by Lamartine, whom she censures. 
She continues to praise Macaulay, but tem- 
pers her approbation somewhat by finding 
him cold as a historian. It is a curious 
charge against Macaulay, the warmest of 
partizans. Miss Mitford has much to say 
on the value of style and of the impor- 
tance of form in art. She mentions two 
new Oxford poets about whom people are 
talking — "the eldest son of Dr. Arnold" 
and " a certain Arthur Clough." 

Love of nature and also of field sports 
are shown in these letters. A passage on 
the nightingale and on the songs of birds 
in general is notable.^ 

^ See pp. 133-4- 
115 



The Correspondence of 

January 15, 1849. 

I will take care that this letter shall be rightly- 
directed, and shall go from the central post-office 
at Reading, where I can at least ensure their not 
putting on those vile stamps. 

After all, what a far viler thing the spirit of 
trade (the shop-keeping spirit, as Napoleon used 
to call it) is, when to a person whom they called 
a friend they could, for the fractional profit of 
so much in the thousand stamps, play such a trick. 
Because they must have known, and they did 
know, that to cheat you in this infinitely little 
manner through me, was what would vex me 
far more than a direct cheating of myself. Thank 
you very much for telling me ; it has come at a 
time when it has done me orood to accumulate 
smallnesses in that quarter. 

I have been very ill, so ill that nobody expected 
me to live (I don't mean since I wrote to you last, 
but in the eight or ten preceding weeks), and little 
as my poor property is, there will be a few hundreds 
besides the value of correspondence and so forth, 
and my good and faithful K. and her poor little 
boy are the persons to whom, after remembrances 
to a few dear friends, those few hundreds would 
go. Well, the persons you wot of, begrudged to 
her this little help, and have been trying all sorts 
of influences to make me suspect her ; and failing 
in that, have shown a degree of passion and 

116 



Mary Russell Mitford 

bitterness which are very, very sad. It is a 
great proof of my being really very much better 
and stronger that all this worry has not entirely 
upset me ; but better and stronger I really am, 
and though from the nature of the complaint I 
may any day be visited by a relapse, I am yet 
thankful for the present respite, and not unhopeful 
for the future. So much have I been cheered by 
this amendment, that I have been seized with the 
strongest fancy to see what seems to me a great 
piece of poetical justice — the Heir of Napoleon 
at the Palace of the Elysee — with my own eyes ; 
and as Henry Chorley, who knows all Paris, is 
oroinof thither the end of March to assist at the 
production of Meyerbeer's new opera, " Le Pro- 
phete," I have appointed to meet him there, and 
intend remaining: long- enougfh to see the sfardens 
of the Tuileries in all their garniture of leaf and 
flower. 

I shall take my clever little maid and the dear 
excellent friend who was with me at Taplow, and 
who, during the course of a very complete medical 
education, spent some years in Paris ; and has, 
since the death of another younger brother enabled 
him to leave his profession, frequently revisited 
the Continent. I wish you could meet us and 
come back with us to England. Can you? Do. 
You would like both my escorts. Henry Chorley, 
clever, crotchety, and good — Mr. Hinton, a thorough 
and perfect English gentleman, very large-minded, 

117 



The Correspondence of 

a great historian and political economist, and quite 
as good as Henry Chorley, and almost as crotchety 
in a different direction, nervous and shy. Never- 
theless they are admirable persons, both, and you 
would be sure to like them, and they to be charmed 
with you, and Henry Chorley might be of great and 
real use to your literary plans. 

He (Henry Chorley) is very intimate with Louis 
Napoleon, and says of him that he is the imper- 
sonation of calm and simple honesty. Mr. Kay 
Shuttleworth sent me word the other day that he 
wrote himself every word of his letters, speeches, 
and proclamations. He has begun well, has he 
not ? Did not that review with its touching scene 
of the column come in strong contrast to the 
tawdry, trumpery processions of the Provisional 
Government? He has not, of course, the genius 
of his uncle, but he has much of his character — 
simple, graceful, and manly. 

I have been reading Lamartine's " Trois mois au 
Pouvoir." His worst enemy could not have served 
him a worse turn than his own vanity has done 
in collecting and perpetuating those speeches, so 
hollow, and empty, and sure to come to nothing 
— as they did. The two most notable things are 
an address to a class of political economists, in 
which the ignorance is worthy of Louis Blanc, 
and the calling Prince Louis Napoleon "M. Charles 
Louis Bonaparte," a bit of spite which would have 
done honour to an angry woman. 

ii8 



Mary Russell Mittord 

Do contrive to meet us in Paris. Do — and if 
not, see if you can send me any letters — especially 
to persons who know English, for not having 
written or spoken a word of French for these 
five-and-forty years, I shall probably be as 
nervous and as shy about it as Mr. Hinton 
himself. It's a droll contrast — my total want of 
command of the spoken language, and the critical 
pleasure that I take in its writers. But I shall go. 

Thank you for thinking about the picture. Our 
gifted portrait painter, Mr. Lucas, whose fine 
portrait of my dear father you remember so kindly, 
was here last week, and he is going to paint me 
this summer just as I am, a real old woman's 
portrait, in a close quiet cap, or a close quiet 
bonnet, such as I wear every day. He adds to 
the great power of giving a likeness like the 
looking-glass, consummate taste and feeling, so 
that he will give the expression a friend wishes 
to see perpetuated — the best expression — without 
that departure from truth which is called flattery, 
which no friend does wish for, because it destroys 
individuality. He stands now deservedly high in 
his own branch of art, and being a most dear 
and valued friend, one of those whose conver- 
sation I like best in the world, the process of 
sitting, usually so painful, will be purely pleasing. 
After I have spoken to him about an engraving, 
we can consult Mr. Lupton, whose wish to engrave 
poor Hay don's picture does me so much honour. 

119 



The Correspondence of 

Of course he would greatly prefer following the 
painting of so eminent a man as Mr. Lucas, to 
copying that strange, exaggerated, yet very life- 
like head, even if it could be found. I have not 
the slightest notion what has become of it. I 
saw it last in Wimpole Street, two or three years 
ago, a huge staring face, looking as if guillotined, 
so closely was it cut out of the canvas, and so 
over-sized. I must ask Mrs. Browning if she 
knows what has become of it. But surely you 
would prefer a head as you know me, and by 
John Lucas. 

Yes, yes, I don't know those German names 
asunder, but I am sure that I read many hundred 
pages of translations from the poems of your 
Auersperg — otherwise Anastasius something. Is 
not that definitive ? I read a dozen or two volumes 
of translations from Uhland, and divers prosemen 
and versemen, and I grant you that the translations 
were bad, but so were the versions of Schiller and 
Goethe, which I read at the same time, and which 
(the ballads of Schiller, especially) could not be 
spoilt. Doubtless Humboldt's letters would have 
been most interesting. It is wonderful what out- 
rageous blunders translators commit. A certain 
literary lady here has translated a great part of 
George Sand, discreetly enough in important 
points, for a young lady may read her version, 
but in the very title of one of the books she has 
contrived to blunder, having rendered " Le Com- 

120 



Mary Russell Mitford 

pagnon du Tour de France " "The Companion of 
the Tour of France," instead of "The Journeyman 
on his Tour of France "; indeed, she had her choice 
of two words, and might have said the "workman." 
But opening the book I found Basse-cour trans- 
lated "lower court"; the woman had never heard 
of a poultry-yard ! 

I wish you would write a great book upon Ger- 
many : its society, its religion, its literature, its art. 
Such a work by some one who really knows the 
heart of the country, not a mere superficial observer 
like William Howitt, would be most welcome. 
Try that the style shall be light, and lively, and 
graceful, and idiomatic. It is wonderful what mere 
style does for a book. It made Southey, it has 
made Macaulay. His history is making the 
greatest sensation that has been made since the 
poems of Byron and the novels of Scott. People 
find fault with it as not being enough one great 
picture, being a series of rich pictures instead of 
one complete work of art. But it is a most beautiful 
book, and I do not see, the object being attained, 
that we have any right to find fault with the 
information being communicated in the manner that 
the author found most agreeable to himself : as well 
find fault with the historical plays of Shakespeare 
because they are not cast into one grand epic. I 
always thought Macaulay the greatest of our living 
writers, and it is delightful to find him so completely 
vindicating my admiration. 

121 



The Correspondence of 

Have you read the new volumes of J6r6me 
Paturot — " Jerome Paturot a la Recherche de la 
Meilleure des R^publiques " ? Do read them. 
They are full of fun, and a great deal of truth with 
it. All about George Sand, " Notre Muse," is 
capital. A friend of mine saw her at a party a 
short while ago, and heard her say just four words, 
which happened to be most characteristic. Talking 
of the Pope, she said, " II est trop pretre." Mrs. 
Browning- used a ofood word about the Italians 
lately. Talking of the safety of remaining in 
Florence, she said, " I rely upon the softness of 
my Tuscans." She expects to be confined next 
month, poor thing ! God grant she pass safely 
through that trial ! You must say anything for me 
to your sister. I reckon her among my friends. 

Do you know I am thinking of putting down my 
recollections — shall I ? It seems to me that every 
autobiography is interesting if faithful and sincere. 
The weather has been most changeable, sometimes 
frosty, but oftener wet. I envy you your frozen 
Danube. 

Miss Mitford's reading at this time chiefly 
related to Mirabeau. When occupied with 
Montigny's " Life of Mirabeau " — she had 
borrowed four volumes out of the ten 
from Rolandi's library and had finished 
reading them — she was so delighted with 

122 



Mary Russell Mitford 

the book that she could not wait to write 
to London for the remaining volumes, and 
so went off to ask her neighbour, Sir Henry 
Russell, who had a fine library, to supply 
her pressing need. "Vie de Mirabeau par 
son fils adoptif?" said Russell's daughter, 
whom on her way to the house Miss Mit- 
ford met in the park. ''Yes," answered 
Miss Mitford, ''that life of Mirabeau, if 
Sir Henry happens to have it. If not, any 
life, any book, by or about him, to serve 
until I can get the true thing!" In a few 
hours a horse and cart arrived at Miss 
Mitford's door, containing a great trunk 
and a note with a key enclosed. The 
trunk was full of Mirabeau : orations, 
letters, lives ; almost all that had been 
written about him " from Dumont's cold, 
unworthy book to the fine etude of Victor 
Hugo. I do not think," Miss Mitford 
wrote, " I even opened a newspaper until 
I had gone through the whole collection." ^ 

February 19, 1849. 
Ever since I wrote to you last I have been laid 

' Cf. " Recollections of a Literary Life," ii, pp. 234-5. 
123 



The Correspondence of 

up with influenza. For a fortnight I never stirred 
from my bed. However, last week's deHcious 
weather set me free agrain. We have had before 
the middle of February weather like April ; the 
hedgerows perfumed by violets and primroses, and 
gay with buttercups, daisies, periwinkles, the fairy 
blossoms of the wild strawberry, and the long 
tassels of the hazel. I never remember so forward 
a spring. 

As to frost, we have had only about one week 
deserving the name through the winter. How I 
should have liked to see the magnificent scene that 
you describe so finely.^ It reminds me of the 
accounts of the breaking up of the ice on the St. 
Lawrence. However, I am thankful for last week's 
sunshine for the good it did me, and the good has 
remained although the sunshine has vanished. I 
am still determined upon my journey to Paris, and 
expect to set out in less than a month. Thank you 
for promising the letters. Everybody says that my 
name will be a sufficient introduction, and so forth. 
Now that is a very pretty speech ; but even if 
it were true, which I do not believe, it would not 
follow that one could go about proclaiming one's 
name or pinning one's card upon one's shawl. 

I have a fresh reason for desiring to see Paris 
since I wrote to you, having been reading twenty- 
one volumes of Mirabeau and about as many of 
" M^moires " of that great orator and statesman. 

^ The breaking up of the ice on the Danube. 
124 



Mary Russell Mitford 

What a man he was ! Have you read the life of 
him by his "fils adoptif," Lucas Montigny?^ If 
not, do, I conjure you. It seems to me the most 
graphic biography in the language, and gives not 
only Mirabeau from head to foot, but full-length 
portraits also of his father and uncle, that odious old 
Marquis (I'Ami des Hommes) and the Bailli. Read 
that book, I beseech you. In the Brussels edition 
you will find an " Etude sur Mirabeau," by Victor 
Hugo, which is exceedingly striking, as all his 
detached bits of prose, prefaces, and so forth are. 
But what a man Mirabeau himself was ! and how 
sure I am that my way of reading all I can gather 
together upon one subject at once is the best for 
enjoyment and for the impression that it makes 
upon the mind. The hatred one conceives for that 
old Marquis, and the admiration and interest and 
affection (in spite of all his faults), that one cannot 
help feeling for his great son, seems a sort of 
renewal of youth. Of course I had met with works 
of Mirabeau before and speeches, and had a general 
knowledge of his story, but now I know him as I 
know an old friend. What a man to be sure ! and 
how many years in advance of his generation ! 
Thank you for all you tell me of Lamartine, which 

* Lucas de Montigny (1782-1852), adopted when a child 
by Mirabeau, collected every sort of thing appertaining to 
Mirabeau, and published in eight vols, in 1834-5 " Memoires, 
biographiques, litteraires et politiques de Mirabeau, ecrits 
par lui-meme, par son pere, son oncle et son fils adoptif, 
Lucas de Montigny." 

125 



The Correspondence of 

is exactly my own opinion. He is French to the 
backbone. Now Napoleon and Mirabeau — Mira- 
beau especially — were of all time and all countries. 
They were 7nen. I have not seen " Les Con- 
fidences " ; I have, however, been reading a silly 
love-story of his called " Raphael." Of course I 
shall read his "Confidences," and Chateaubriand's 
"Autobiography," although I hold him also to be 
greatly overrated. Just read his Indian works, and 
Cooper's (sad coxcomb as Cooper is !), and one feels 
at once where the force and, to a certain point, the 
truth lies. I say to a certain point, for in reality I 
presume that neither writer is true. By the way, 
besides my anger at that old Marquis de Mirabeau, 
I have been exceedingly indignant at Dumont. If 
he had written Mirabeau's great speeches, why 
did he not write like that after the great man 
was dead? Do read Lucas Montigny's "Life" 
and " Les Discours," and in short, the whole 
works — do. 

Never was a greater hit than Macaulay has made. 
It is an able work, but to my mind, and I have read 
it all through very carefully, it is strangely cold. 
There is a want of sympathy, and, above all, of 
sympathy with misfortune, which one did not ex- 
pect from the author of the " Lays of Rome." I, 
too, like you, was astonished at his omitting that 
striking scene from " Les Memoires de Grammont," 
but I soon found, as doubtless you have discovered 
by this time) that his hatred of James was such as 

126 



Mary Russell Mitford 

would, at all times, prevent his putting down any- 
one thing to his advantage. He is a good hater, 
and seems to me to take a pleasure in knocking 
down reputations ; — Dryden, for instance — he really 
seems to begrudge that great master of English 
prose and English verse his poor hundred a year ; 
and Monmouth, for whose tragic history and mis- 
fortunes everybody is accustomed to feel a little 
interest, how he delights in trampling upon him. 
The only one of his attacks on which I feel a strong 
sympathy was that upon William Penn. One is 
amused to think what the Friends will say to their 
great Founder's trotting to two executions in a day. 
The only person for whom Macaulay seems to care 
is that cold, formal Dutchman, who never became 
English. It is a very able work, nevertheless, but I 
like a certain enthusiasm, and even hold it essential 
to the highest literary merit. 

My dear friend, Mrs, Cockburn (Lord Byron's 
first love, Mary Duff), wrote me word the other 
day that on inquiring for the best and prettiest 
Fairy Tales to give to her little grand-daughter, her 
bookseller had given her j^^^^r book. " I only hope," 
said dear Mrs. Cockburn, " that my little girl may 
be half as well pleased with it as I have been." 
She is a most sweet person. I corresponded with 
her for three years before I found out that her 
eldest son, who came here with her, was not her 
husband, so much had she preserved of the youth 
and loveliness that had charmed the great poet. 

127 



The Correspondence of 

So you leave Ratisbon next year ! Has it ever 
occurred to you to take a house in England and 
take pupils ? You are so fitted for that occupation, 
and your connexions among the very highest per- 
sons must render it so easy, I should think, to fill 
such an establishment. The only thing against it 
is, I suppose, your not being in Orders ; but then 
that is mere habit and prejudice, because, in point 
of fact, the clergyman has enough to do with his 
cure, the tutor with his pupils. You know best, but 
that seems to me so honourable — so comfortable a 
way of life — with your dear sister, or with one still 
dearer and nearer. I should be so glad to know 
you were happily settled, and somewhere where we 
could meet often. Thank you for all you say of the 
biography. I have not been well enough to begin 
yet, but I shall (D.V.) when I return from Paris. 
I shall leave the portrait to Mr. Lucas ; his taste is 
perfect. 

April 2, 1849. 

Thank you a thousand and a thousand times for 
your great goodness. May I keep the letter you 
were so very kind as to send me till the autumn ? 
Because it now seems likely that my journey may 
be postponed till then. 

I am just in the discomfort of changing servants, 
not my own dear little maid, who waits upon me 
and walks with me, and is literally and really my 
right hand, but the younger girl who does the 

128 



Mary Russell Mitford 

housework, and every now and then grows out of 
her place and wants promotion and higher wages. 
This has happened now, and it will not do to let an 
untried stranger have charge of my poor cottage, so 
until we have had some experience of the new 
damsel, who is to come to us at Easter, and whom 
we chose out of three sisters because she sate at 
work with a little baby brother on her knee, and 
had tidy hair and a nice bright and good-natured 
face. What details to send to one who lives in a 
palace, and hears the turret clock strike at midnight 
while the watchman traverses the great corridors. 
But some day you may have just such a little 
poetical cottage establishment of your own. I 
believe you would be very happy in such an one, 
although, I can't tell why, but I always think that 
your story will end like a romance, by your marry- 
ing some great lady and having a chateau to your 
own share. Such things do happen now and then 
in life as well as in books, and you are just the sort 
of person to justify such a choice and do honour to 
such a destiny. 

I have heard twice of Mrs. Browning since I 
wrote to you, the first letter to tell me that she 
was safely confined with a fine boy ; the second, 
that the mother and infant were going on well. 
The first letter is the only one I have received from 
Mr. Browning. 

So you are reading Lucas Montigny's " Life of 
Mirabeau." I am sure it will interest you above all 

I 129 



The Correspondence of 

things — it did me. I got only the first three 
volumes from Rolandi's, and I could not wait for a 
parcel from London, but sent about the neighbour- 
hood till I met with a friend who had the book, and 
who sent me twenty-one other volumes of and 
about Mirabeau. Amongst these were three other 
biographies — Dumont's lying book, the " Lettres 
de Cachet," the " Histoire secrete de la Cour de 
Berlin," and three very thick volumes of " Discours," 
containing all his speeches inthe National Assem- 
bly. I have also read the two trials with his own 
memoirs and speeches there, and almost all that he 
ever wrote, except two or three books that never 
should have been printed, and the famous " Lettres 
originales du Donjon de Vincennes," the celebrated 
letters to Sophie, of which many of the biographies 
contain long extracts, and which I must read 
altogether. 

The extracts from those letters seem to me as far 
superior to Rousseau as passion is to sentiment, or 
truth to fiction. I must have those five volumes. 
Lucas Montigny is somewhat of a prig, and does 
not half enough envy, hate, and detest the Marquis 
and le Bailli ; but I go along with him quite in his 
enthusiasm for that great man his father, whose 
faults seem to have been mainly produced by the 
tremendous tyranny of which he was the object. 
The domestic tyrannies, his family, the crown, the 
laws of the kingdom — the provincial parliament — 
all these, acting upon his burning southern tempera- 

130 



Mary Russell Mitford 

ment and his tempestuous passions, combined to 
form that stormy youth ; but with all his faults of 
conduct, how great and how wise a man he was ! 
How much before his age ! What a definition of 
free trade did he give in the brief phrase laisser 
faire and laisser passer. What a picture of the 
French public when he said that for them there 
were no such words as toujours or jamais \ How 
genial he was, how kind, how generous, how love- 
able, how loving ! One of his biographers gives a 
vivid account of the connection of the Marquis with 
the woman de Pailly, who had been a femme de 
chambre and who ruled them all ; and he to dare to 
blame the disorders into which his own avarice and 
tyranny and his cold-hearted daughter-in-law drove 
her gifted husband ! Does not that unworthy 
woman resemble Marie Louise? Mirabeau might 
well say that his flight was too high and too unequal 
for her. 

In one of the memoirs not inserted in " Lucas 
Montigny " he blames himself " for expecting fruit 
from a tree that could only bear flowers." Is not 
this most beautiful in its indulgence and its grace ? 
and how like Napoleon's forbearance to Marie 
Louise ! Do tell me all you think of Mirabeau, 
and do get the " Discours." They are magnificent. 

I have been reading- " Les Confidences"^ — a 

pretty book which, whether true or not (and to me, 

especially coming after the realities of Mirabeau, it 

^ By Lamartine. 

131 



The Correspondence of 

bears falsehood stamped upon every page), gives 
one the very worst possible idea of the writer. 
This pleased me most : next to the having an 
enthusiasm justified, one likes to find oneself borne 
out in a prejudice. He is jealous of Napoleon's 
fame, as all vain men are — as Lord Byron was. 
But just fancy what Napoleon would have done in 
his position last February — or Mirabeau. They 
were men of thought and action, Lamartine is 
merely a man of words. Just (to exemplify his 
falseness) watch the dates in " Les Confidences." 
You will find him fifteen when he makes love in 
1805, and twenty in 18 15. Indeed, twenty is his 
favourite age. He sticks at that, just as the maid 
who is about to leave me called herself nineteen 
when she came to me two years ago, and calls her- 
self nineteen still. It is clear that the Raphael 
story is to dovetail in with the end of " Les Con- 
fidences," which (in the edition I have seen — is 
there any continuation ?) leaves him on the road to 
Aix, and to another tragedy. Only fancy a man of 
sixty writing all this rubbish about girls dying for 
love of him — a man who is an historian and an 
orator, and who pretends to be a statesman ! 
Think whether Napoleon or Mirabeau would have 
done so. The Sophie correspondence came out 
after the great writer's death, and without his 
suspecting that it ever would appear. 

I have only read the first part of " Chateau- 
briand." It is interesting, and seems perfectly true. 

132 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Talk to me of your impressions of Mirabeau and 
of these books, and of any new French ones, and 
tell me what you hear of Louis Napoleon. I have 
not room here for a pretty story about him that my 
friend Mr. Hinton told me. He was much beloved 
and respected at Leamington, where he lived for a 
year. Above all, tell me of yourself. Poor Hardey 
Coleridge ! ^ How the great names go out ! 

P.S. — I am reading another collection of Horace 
Walpole. 

May 6, 1849. 

If I wanted anything beyond my own regard for 
you and your own most kind letters, I should be 
reminded of you by the nightingales which are just 
now singing in such abundance, and peopling all 
the woods and fields with the notes that you have 
described so well. We have one most exquisite 
bird in my poor garden. Oh, such a bird ! Did 
you ever remark how much nightingale differs from 
nightingale in force and power and sweetness and 
variety.'* I have often noticed it, but never so 
much as this year, when our bird, as K. proudly 
calls it, and one of equal quality about two miles 
off, seem to me to excel all their compeers as much 
as the greatest singer of the opera beats his inferiors 
of the chorus. Now surely this is not the case with 
other feathered songsters. Blackbird does not differ 
from blackbird, nor thrush from thrush. K. and I, 

' Died January 6, 1849. 
133 



The Correspondence of 

agreeing perfectly in the superiority of the two, 
dispute as to their separate merits, I rather prefer- 
ring the distant singer, whom I go to hear every 
night, she fighting stoutly for our neighbour of the 
garden, as I believe, because it is ours ; such is 
the magic of the possessive pronoun, even when 
the application be a mere fiction, as our beloved 
bird will indicate when he and his mate have reared 
their family, and they all fly away. All happiness 
go with them ! I love those birds as if they were 
conscious of my gratitude and affection ; and really, 
I half think that my pet, the far-off neighbour, does 
know my love for him, for he never fails to salute 
me as often as I draw near. 

How very kind your German and French friends 
are to me : I owe it chiefly, of course, to your par- 
tiality, to which I am but too proud to owe all 
manner of benefits, but yet I have been accustomed 
to feel grateful for the good opinion of German 
readers of Enorlish books. It is astonishino^ how 
well they know our literature, and how little, to 
judge from French writers, our authors are known 
in France. The only one whom they appear really 
to appreciate is Mrs. Radcliffe — Anne Radcliffe, as 
they call her, for they do not even mis-spell her 
name. It is quite amusing to see how much a 
writer, wellnigh forgotten in England, is admired 
in France. I dare say, now, you never read a page 
of her novels, and yet such critics as Ste.-Beuve, 
such poets as Victor Hugo, such novelists as Balzac 

134 



Mary Russell Mitford 

and George Sand, to say nothing of a thousand 
inferior writers, talk of her in raptures. I will 
venture to say that she is quoted fifty times where 
Scott is quoted once. Indeed, I believe that the 
real merits both of Scott and Shakespeare are little 
known to them, although they may know the stories 
of both from operas and so forth, as the mob of the 
English (by the way) know Beaumarchais' great 
comedies. I used to think that Shakespeare could 
not be at all rendered in French, but Alfred de 
Vigny has made a very fair translation of " Othello," 
and Madame Tastu has executed the more difficult 
task of transposing the garden scene of " Romeo 
and Juliet " into verse that is really high poetry. 

When you thank your fair friend for her goodness 
to me, tell her that I still hope to deliver her letter. 
Perhaps in the autumn, for Paris will be too hot for 
me now, although the weather here is very cold 
and stormy. The hail the other day swept every 
chimney in the house, and did much mischief to 
garden and fields. Henry Chorley says I had no 
loss in not meeting him in Paris, for that he never 
felt so strongly the miserable hollowness and trust- 
lessness of the French character under the thinnest 
possible crust of gaiety. Well, I hope better things. 
I like their literature, with all its faults, and am well 
disposed to like them. Tell me if, with all his faults, 
Mirabeau is not adorable, and yet you ought to read 
his ** Discours " and his " Mdmoires pour Consulter," 
and a great deal besides, that good M. Lucas Mon- 

135 



The Correspondence of 

tigny would not put into his book, because, forsooth, 
it had been printed before. He is a sad prig, and 
yet I should like to know him, too, for the sake of 
the great man whom he has written about. I wish 
I were likely to see you this summer, but I fear 
there is no such good luck in store. 

September lo, 1849. 

I can hardly tell you how much pleasure your 
letter gave me — the very sight of your handwriting 
before I opened it — for I had got afraid that you 
were ill. You spoil me by your great kindness and 
goodness and punctuality ; and then I recollected 
your fever, and this year has been so rife of disease, 
that one becomes frightened at the least delay in a 
letter from a distant friend. Soon, very soon, I 
hope you will be within reach ; shall you not ? Do 
you not come to England next spring ? There is 
no one, not even Mrs. Browning, whom I should 
more rejoice to feel as within comeatable distance — 
to see very often, and to know all about. The 
stanzas on the nightingale are very beautiful, but 
I like the writer better even than the exquisite bird, 
and had rather hear all about him (which in rare 
and distant letters is difficult, if not impossible) 
than even his verses. 

I am better and stronger than last year, and 
should have been greatly so, but for a terrible 
attack of neuralgia on the left side of the face— the 
real regular neuralgia, intermittent and without 

136 




MRS. COBDEN. 
From a photograph. 



Mary Russell Mitford 

inflammation ; downright tic, in short — which I 
caught at a party at Whiteknights, where I spent 
a long out-of-door day with Baron Goldsmid and 
his charming family, and Mr. and Mrs. Cobden — 
they and I, out of thirty persons, the only Chris- 
tians. Did you ever see this hero of free trade ? 
He impressed me exceedingly. I expected to find 
a very clever, powerful man, but coarse and elderly 
— a man out of a counting-house. On the contrary, 
he is young-looking, full of taste, grace, elegance, 
and refinement, playful and gentle in the highest 
degree. The wife is a true English beauty, rosy 
round face, and with the sweetest expression 
possible. I saw a great deal of him, sitting next 
him at dinner, and walking about those beautiful 
grounds side by side with him and Miss Goldsmid, 
who is herself so very clever a woman that her 
conversation brings out everybody's best.' 

Do you know much of the Jews ? I have always 
been interested in the whole race, and my friend, 
Miss Goldsmid, has taken pains to make me 
acquainted with them. She has given me a volume 
of sermons translated, and very finely translated, by 
herself, from the German, of one of their priests 
named Salomon. They are full of charity and 

^ Cf. " Letters of Mary Russell Mitford," ed. Chorley, 1872, 
ii, p. 102. " I was delighted with him [i.e., Cobden] , and to 
say truth a little surprised, having expected an older, rougher 
man ; what astonished me was his simplicity and playfulness, 
his elegance and refinement. His wife, too, is sweetly 
pretty." 

137 



The Correspondence of 

brotherly love, and deserve to be put on the same 
shelf with the " Lettres spirituelles " of Fenelon, 
and the works of Channing and Arnold, which they 
resemble in largeness of heart and in indulgence to 
human error. Except Josephus, I never read 
any work of a Jewish author before out of the 
Bible, and unluckily I am not likely to read many, 
the greater number being, she tells me, in Hebrew, 
some in Latin, many in Spanish at the time when 
the Moors were in Spain, and art and science 
almost in the exclusive hands of the Jews — and 
now almost all the Jewish publications are in 
German. I tell you this because, if any of their 
works fall in your way I think they would interest 
you. I am sure Salomon's sermons would. He is 
still alive and working- in that great work of 
brotherly love. Miss Goldsmid is a noble woman. 

Here ^^ have been hitherto free of cholera. It 
has been lurking about in some of the Buckingham- 
shire villages, upon clay, and amongst those who 
gather rags for the paper mills, and so trade in dirt, 
but generally in the country it has kept away. In 
London it certainly is more widely diffused than is 
known. 

I dined yesterday after a church stone-laying 
(where the goose who laid the stone actually put on 
eight trowels-full of mortar, not knowing that the 
whole affair was make-believe), in company with 
two notabilities fresh from London, the Bishop of 

138 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Oxford (Wilberforce) and Baron Rolfe.^ and both 
said that they knew of twenty cases in the best 
streets in town. 

The Baron is really clever, and his wife very 
pleasant and intelligent. They are only here for a 
short time, having taken the house of a neighbour 
of mine while his family is abroad. Very few 
people comparatively have gone abroad this year. 
I myself still indulge in visions of Paris. Don't 
you like the conduct of the President } He seems 
to me quite the ideal of a good prince ; because 
I am convinced that the intervention at Rome 
(although mismanaged by its agents — the persons 
intrusted with its execution) was intended to pre- 
vent the evils of reaction. It has now become 
a serious difficulty, in consequence of the idiotism 
of the Pope. A twelvemonth ago a friend of mine 
heard George Sand say of him, " II est trop pretre," 
which has turned out a most just criticism, one of 
those revelations of character which are almost 
predictions. 

Those nightingale verses are very beautiful, 
especially the last stanza. Do you think the song 
melancholy? I do not. It is too full of energy 
and spirit, has too much verve. I remember a 
charming letter of poor Charles Fox vindicating 
the cheerfulness of the song. We have two new 

' Robert Monsey Rolfe (1790- 1868), Baron of the Ex- 
chequer, created Baron Cranworth, 1850, and appointed 
Lord Chancellor, 1852. 

139 



The Correspondence of 

poets at Oxford, one the eldest son ^ of Dr. Arnold, 
whose book I have not seen. It is said to be fine ; 
the other a certain Arthur Clough, who is a poet in 
the highest sense. Many of his pieces are painfully 
sceptical. There is now a great reaction there, 
consequent upon Puseyism, and many of the 
cleverest young men doubt of all. But this one 
is a fine poet at all events ; that is certain. 

December 27, 1849. 
Thank you a thousand times for your kind wishes 
and charming letter. I had begun to be fretful and 
fidgety about you, and to think your silence long — 
a very sure proof of my affection ; for in a general 
way I care little for letters, but from you and one or 
two more I love to hear. Yes, by all means write 
the Chamois-hunting book. Two of the most 
charming productions for many years have been a 
work on Deer-stalking, I think, by Mr. Scrope,^ 
and another still pleasanter by Mr. St. John, 3 con- 
taining a sort of diary of field sports in Scotland, all 
sorts of field sports mingled with all sorts of natural 
history. The more minute the better — the more 
graphic and dramatic ; a chamois hunt should be a 

^ Matthew Arnold, " The Strayed Reveller and other 
Poems," 1849. 

» " Days of Deer-stalking in the Forest of Athole," 1847, by 
William Scrope. 

3 " A Tour in Sutherlandshire, with extracts from Field- 
books of a Sportsman and Naturalist," 2 vols., 1849, by Charles 
W. G. St. John. 

140 



Mary Russell Mitford 

story. All my youth was passed among sportsmen, 
especially coursers. My father kept eight or ten 
brace of first-rate greyhounds, belonged to three or 
four of the great clubs, and has won cups and 
goblets in his time. I used to delight in coursing, 
wrote a poem on it, and was quite as good a judge 
of a greyhound as of a cricketer. But indeed I 
love all sorts of field sports and hold it to be a 
natural instinct. Indeed, I am apt to have a slight 
contempt for the mere penman who can neither 
bring down a pheasant nor ride up to hounds. 

Up to my dear father's death, seven years ago, 
we used to take in two or three sporting periodicals, 
and I used to read them to him of an evening. Of 
course these periodicals contained a good deal about 
the different continental sports — wild boar hunting, 
stag shooting, hunting the chamois, etc. Whether 
there be any work of importance on the last men- 
tioned diversion, I cannot tell, nor is it of con- 
sequence. It is altogether an affair of execution. 
Be graphic, be minute, be dramatic, make an actual 
existing person of the chamois, and a narrative of 
the chase, and you will be sure to prosper. 

I love all field sports except a battue, which I 
detest ; as well shoot down the poultry in a farm- 
yard, as the game in a well-stocked preserve. The 
legitimate pleasure of the thing is, that it is a pursuit 
— a seeking and finding, not a mere slaughter. 

Do not let me forget to tell you that in a 
catalogue of Monroe's books of Cambridge Uni- 

141 



The Correspondence of 

versity (U.S.) and Boston, I find " The Dream of 
Lilian Tuk" translated by Charles Boner. The 
catalogue is so select that it is really a compliment. 
The number of American books that I have 
received lately is extraordinary ; all good ; none 
very good — bits of Longfellow are the best, and 
an exquisite piece of a speech of Daniel Webster's 
in an elegant volume called " The Boston Book 
for 1850." 

Yes, Esther is very fine, so are all the series of 
" Illusions perdues " stories, to which that belongs, 
especially the second " Un grand Homme de Pro- 
vince a Paris," which is, I think, Balzac's very best 
novel. Mrs. Browning says she hears a wretched 
account of him, personally, from an American 
authoress,^ and I am well disposed to believe it, 
for with all his great artistic power the man himself 
seems quite devoid of generous sentiment and kind 
impulse. Nevertheless he is a great writer.^ 

Mrs. Browning says that her little boy is the 
wonder of Italy for strength and size. She herself 
was well enough this summer at the baths of 
Lucca to climb the courses of extinct volcanoes, 

' Miss Fuller (Mme. Ossoli). 

^ Cf. " Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," ed. Kenyon, 
1897, i, p. 428. " Balzac went into the world scarcely at 
all, frequenting the lowest cafes, so that it was difficult to 
track him out. Which information I receive doubtingly. 
The rumours about Balzac with certain parties in Paris are 
not likely to be too favourable nor at all reliable, I should 
fancy." 

142 



Mary Russell Mitford 

on donkeys, and to lose herself on foot in the 
chestnut forests. Mr. Lever was there, and we 
exchanged tender messages. I like his books, 
and everybody says that the man himself is most 
brilliant and most charming. Tell me, don't you 
like the President of the French Republic ? I do. 
He seems to me too good for that fickle nation. 
Lamartine's "Revolution of 1848" is curiously 
vain and egotistic, even for him. The only inter- 
esting part was the account of the running away 
of the Royal Family. 

You don't say anything about your return to 
England. Tell me your plans when they are 
formed. I take the truest interest in them. 



143 



1850 



The letters for 1850 extend from February 
to November. At the beginning of the 
year Miss Mitford's health was greatly 
improved, but an outbreak of smallpox at 
Reading, when her gardener and her maid's 
little boy were attacked, caused her much 
worry and uneasiness. She kept them both 
in the house and both recovered, and no 
other member of the household suffered. 
The man had been vaccinated, the maid 
who nursed him had had smallpox "the 
natural way " some years before, and Miss 
Mitford herself "had been inoculated after 
the old fashion." As is clear, Miss Mitford 
was willing to take risks, but she declared 
that she had lost all faith in vaccination. 

At the beginning of the year Boner sent 
Miss Mitford in manuscript the first four 
chapters of his book on chamois hunting. 

It had adventures on the way, not arriving 

144 



Mary Russell Mitford 

until many weeks after it was due, and 
causing Miss Mitford much distress of 
mind. Writing to Mrs. Ouvry in March, 
1850, she says: "A dear friend of mine 
sent me the first four chapters of a most 
vivid, striking book on * Chamois Hunting 
in the Mountains of Germany.' Consulting 
me as a confrere — a brother sportsman — 
he posted it at Ratisbon, with a separate 
letter. The letter came via Paris ; the 
packet (and no copy had been kept) wan- 
dered about during two months, and at last 
reached me through Hamburg and Hull. 
I really believe our London Post Office 
picked it up, for they behaved like angels 
upon the occasion." 

Miss Mitford criticized Boner's manuscript 
with candour, while she gave it high praise. 

It is curious that Miss Mitford, despite 
the catholicity of her reading, should have 
been wholly unable to appreciate or under- 
stand Carlyle. The reference to his opinion 
of Miss Barrett's poetry is interesting. 
The statement, however, that he lost an 
admirer in Miss Barrett is not in accord- 

K 145 



The Correspondence of 

ance with fact. In her letters during 1844 
Miss Barrett refers to Carlyle in terms of 
respect and admiration ; he wrote her a 
** delightful letter" on her marriage. In 
1 85 1, while on a visit to London, Mrs. 
Browning went to see Carlyle, *' one of the 
sights in England to my mind," and he 
travelled back with her and her husband 
as far as Paris ; "it is difficult to conceive 
a more interesting human soul, I think," Mrs. 
Browning wrote on that occasion both to 
Miss Mitford and Mrs. Jameson. 

In May Miss Mitford was again ill, and 
had to confess her inability to receive Boner, 
who was in England, except for an occa- 
sional hour. 

In the summer of 1850 Henry Chorley, 

who had taken over the editorship of the 

"Lady's Companion," a weekly journal 

belonging to Bradbury and Evans, the 

circulation of which had greatly fallen off, 

asked Miss Mitford to come to his aid. She 

undertook to write for him a series of papers 

to be entitled " Readings of Poetry, Old and 

New." They were published in book form in 

146 



Mary Russell Mitford 

1852, in three volumes, as " Recollections of 
a Literary Life." 

The cottage at Three Mile Cross in which 
Miss Mitford had lived since 1820 was 
now in so bad a state that she deter- 
mined to leave it unless the owner put it into 
proper habitable condition. " In truth," she 
writes, " it was leaving me. All above the 
foundation seemed mouldering, like an old 
cheese, with damp and rottenness. The rain 
came dripping through the roof and stream- 
ing through the walls. The hailstones 
pattered upon my bed through the casements, 
and the small panes rattled and fell to pieces 
every high wind. My pony was driven from 
his stable by a great hole where the bricks 
had fallen out of the side, and from the 
coach-house, where he was led for refuge, by 
a huge gap in the thatch above. There was 
some danger that his straw bed must be 
spread in the little hall ; but the hall itself 
was no safer, for one evening, crossing from 
the door to the staircase, I found myself 
dragging off the skirting-board by no 
stronger a compulsion than the flounce of a 

147 



The Correspondence of 

muslin gown. The poor cottage was 
crumbling around us." 

February i, 1850. 
I cannot tell you how much your most kind letter 
rejoiced me. I only got it to-day, the MS. not yet 
received. But although I shall not finish my epistle 
till it arrives, I cannot but begin my reply to your 
letter at once. How like you is that frankness 
about your plans ! and how natural your hesitation ! 
Oh, that I were rich ! It is at such times that one 
feels such a desire, because, accepting me as a sort 
of aunt, you would not mind. As it is, one does 
not know how to advise. It seems to me certain 
that such a person as you must get on, and yet 
when one looks at two or three tragical histories of 
our own times, notably of that of Gerald Griffin, 
with youth and genius and considerable reputation, 
and I greatly fear there are more tragedies and 
worse than that tragedy of a broken heart. When 
one thinks of these things one fears. Another 
thing, too, makes one ready to advise against one's 
own earnest wishes, and that is the high value, the 
just value, which they evidently set upon you where 
you are. It is much to be fully esteemed, valued, 
and appreciated. It is what rarely happens to a 
very superior person in his own country, or even in 
his own family. Have you never observed this ? 
Still I do most earnestly wish that something may 
make it right and expedient for you to come to 

148 



Mary Russell Mitford 

England. I am sixty-three years old, and cannot of 
course look forward to what would carry me even 
beyond the threescore years and ten. 

It must be as you think right, for that is the 
safest way of deciding after all. I remember my 
oldest friend, William Harness, when inquiring of 
me if I knew of a tutor for Mr. Hope's family, 
saying, " If I were a single man I would take the 
situation myself." He was wedded, like you, to a 
sister ; a sister twenty years younger than himself, 
who has always made him the nicest little wife in 
the world. It is a charming natural tie, the most so 
of all. I always longed for a brother to be proud of 
and look up to. 

Well, I have been in great trouble since I wrote 
to you last, and am still in a sort of quarantine. 
About two months ago my man who drives the 
little pony carriage, and takes care of my garden, 
a very steady and respectable servant, was seized 
with smallpox after vaccination. I was advised 
to send him away, but we owe duties to others 
and of course ought to fulfil them ; so we did the 
best we could. He was very, very ill, delirious 
nearly a fortnight, not a nurse could be got for love 
or money, and the weather was tremendous. How- 
ever, we got through it, and then my dear maid K.'s 
little boy, who had been sent home here from his 
school at Reading because smallpox had broken 
out next door — he took it, and both his mother and 
I gave him up. I bless God, however, that he too 

149 



The Correspondence of 

has recovered ; but the people still pass on the other 
side of the way, and a carriage stops and leaves 
a card and makes a hurried inquiry. Everybody 
dreads the infection, and everybody is right. I 
have lost all faith in vaccination either as preventing 
or mitigating smallpox. I know of thirty severe 
cases, five of them fatal, in my own immediate 
neighbourhood this winter, besides those in my own 
family, and in Reading it has been a pestilence. 

K. had had the smallpox the natural way, and I 
had been inoculated after the old fashion, so we 
escaped. Our under-maid had been vaccinated for 
the second time two years ago, but we are not sure 
about her yet. K., who is a perfect sister of charity 
in illness, has suffered so much from anxiety and 
fatigue, that I am alarmed about her. 

I have not been ill, for which I am very thankful. 
That dreadful tic, Mr. May says, is manageable in 
my case, because it has not taken the hold of my con- 
stitution that it does when it seizes people in earlier 
life. But I have great reason to be thankful that I 
have not had it this winter, between the cold and 
the worry. 

If K. be well enough, I should like to go to town 
in a fortnight to see a play by Henry Chorley, 
which is coming out at the " Surrey." The author 
read it to me when he was writing it, and would like 
to see me there the first night. He who lives 
much with fine people and thinks them cold (I 
suppose they are so) says that he likes the notions 

150 



Mary Russell Mitford 

of a Faubourg audience, but I am rather afraid that 
neither audience nor actors will be quite equal to a 
most refined and elegant blank- verse comedy. It is 
called " Old Love and New Fortune," and is very 
beautifully written. ^ The books I have liked best 
lately are " Southey's Life and Letters," and 
"Shirley," by the author of "Jane Eyre." 

P.S. — Feb. 21. Henry Chorley's play has 
succeeded, I am glad to say, although I could not 
get to see it. I must go to town when you come 
there. 

March i8, 1850, 

The MS. I shall keep for your orders. I hope 
you will come and fetch it in person. I have only 
cursorily looked over the pages. They seem to 
me very delightful. There is a tinge of un-Eng- 
lish idiom all through, too subtle, perhaps, to be 
caught, but there it is, and there let it be. It 
rather, in my mind, adds to the couleur locale. 
It tells its own true story : I am written by an 
English gentleman — scholar, poet, and sportsman 
as well as gentleman — who has lived long abroad. 

You cannot imagine how much better I am than 
I have been during the last two or three years. 
I think that ever since violeting began I have 
walked eight or nine miles every day. We have 
had glorious weather ; hardly a drop of rain for 

' It was performed February 18, 1850, at the Surrey 
Theatre, with Creswick in the principal part. 

151 



The Correspondence of 

this month past, and dust enough to ransom all 
the kings of the earth. 



P.S. — I have now read the whole MS. atten- 
tively, and I am charmed with it. There are 
certain passages quite charming ; one about the 
effect produced on the mind by the immobility of 
the mountains, the absence of trees, or anything 
that can move — another on a Bible picture of 
Jacob leaning on his staff, with a little personal 
remark at the end, which is most touching and 
beautiful — the perfection of taste ; just enough to 
interest, not a word too much. The idiom, too, 
goes off; a little remains, but only what adds to 
the individuality. It would be difficult to alter, 
and I would not if I could. Most sportsmen 
writing are more prodigal of their shootings. 
They like to report a great number of killed ; but 
I think there is more interest, as well as more 
truth in your sobriety, in that respect, the death 
of the one chamois — than in such a multiplied 
slaughter. I am sure of the success of that book.^ 
It is original and true, and the strong feeling 
against all this revolutionary excess which prevails 
in England will carry your readers along with the 
forester's lamentations over the slaughter of the 
chamois by the peasantry. I repeat, I am sure of 

^ " Chamois Hunting in the Mountains of Bavaria," pub- 
lished in 1854. 

152 



Mary Russell Mitford 

the book. It is full of poetry, full of you, and 
worth a million of Andersen's. 

April 7, 1850. 

My good opinion of the book ^ has gone on 
increasing. Don't alter it at all. Don't change 
the style ; it gives to it individuality and identity, 
and really it is graceful and pretty, and the whole 
book will be charming. I have read almost all that 
Carlyle has written, and was, like you, much struck 
with his " Hero-Worship." I am afraid, however, 
I do not like him quite as well as you do. In 
the first place I have a firm persuasion that clear 
thoughts make clear words, and that where great 
obscurity exists in the language, the fault will gene- 
rally be found lower and deeper. In the next, I 
detest and abhor certain atrocities and abomina- 
tions, which I suppose he means for humour, and 
which abound especially in the two huge volumes 
about Cromwdl. Thirdly, I mistrust his sincerity 
and earnestness, chiefly because he says one thing 
on Monday and another on Tuesday, contradicting 
himself with as little scruple as he contradicts other 
people. 

I am told by his admirers that the French Revo- 
lution is his great work. Perhaps it may be, only 
I am quite convinced that nobody who did not 
know the story previously would gain the slightest 
idea of it from Mr. Carlyle's three volumes, and 

- Ibid. 
153 



The Correspondence of 

that is not my theory of a history. His last work, 
which I have not seen, is said to be eminently 
socialist, but until translated into English I would 
always give him the benefit of a doubt. For the 
rest he has a large following, and is so glad to 
increase it that you would be received with open 
arms. Of poetry he is intolerant — at least two 
friends of mine, Elizabeth Barrett and Mr. Bennett, 
each sent him a present of their works, and received 
answers so nearly alike (I saw both of them), that 
it seemed to me a set form, kept for the purpose. 
He praised the powers of both lady and gentleman, 
but deprecated the use made of them, and advised 
both parties " to say rather than to sing," which 
advice, being construed, meant, I suppose, to take 
to prose instead of verse. ^ 

The counsel lost him both his admirers. I have 
never heard either of them mention his name since. 
For my own part I never saw him, and having 
never had any sort of intercourse with him, am at 
least free from personal prejudice. Do you know 

' Cf. letter from Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 
February 17, 1845 : " I am a devout sitter at his [Carlyle's] feet 
— and it is an effort to me to think him wrong in anything — 
and once when he told me to write prose and not verse, I 
fancied that his opinion was I had mistaken my calling — 
a fancy which in infinite kindness and gentleness he stooped 
immediately to correct. ... I do not know him person- 
ally at all, but as his disciple I ventured to send him 
my poems, and I heard from him as a consequence." (" The 
Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett," 
1899, i, p. 25.) 

154 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Emerson, the American essayist? It seems to me 
that he would have been a great writer and thinker, 
if Carlyle had not fallen in his way. Now he 
appears a mere copyist of the Scotchman. At one 
time I apprehended his queer jargon to be German 
idiom (I mean Carlyle's), although his ** Life of 
Schiller" comes nearer to English than his later 
works, but a German Jewess, who was talking to 
me about him, said he was the most difficult 
English author that she had ever attempted to 
translate into German. 

After you have read more of him, you will like 
him less. I am quite sure that your fine taste 
will be repelled by the horrible coarseness of some 
of his nicknames in the Cromwell book. He is 
constantly talking of flunkeyism, and trades upon 
half-a-dozen cant words of that order. 

Oh, how I should have liked to see that mask 
of Napoleon! His face is the very ideal of beauty 
in all the prints and paintings : the upper part all 
power, the lower all sweetness. The greatest sin 
ever committed by a nation was ours in letting that 
great man perish at St. Helena. 

I have just finished the third volume of 
" Southey's Life and Letters": all his old friends 
complain of the selection and the omissions, and 
say that Cuthbert Southey, the son, who is editing 
the work, is a young man quite incompetent to 
choose from the enormous mass of correspondence 
at his disposal. I only hope that all will be even- 

155 



The Correspondence of 

tually published, for although there is much in 
which I do not agree, I delight in the letters and 
could read a hundred such. 

How very glad I shall be to see you ! You must 
be here as much as you can. Perhaps I shall be 
in town part of the time. The more I think of 
the stag part the less I think any change will be 
needed. I like the book more and more. 

May, 1850. 

I received your letter to-day (Saturday) and 
immediately did up your MS. (that charming MS.) 
and sent it into Reading with a note to the post- 
master, commending it to his especial charge, and 
I have his answer in return. There has been 
some delay in the few notes that have passed 
between us since your arrival in London, although 
I cannot find out exactly at what point. I received 
your first despatch on Wednesday, and answered it 
by return of post. That note you ought to have 
got on Thursday. Now to-day comes your second 
note, undated, but clearly written as soon as you 
had read mine. I tell you this, first of all to clear 
myself from any neglect or delay in the transmittal 
of the MS. ; in the second place to show that it 
will be necessary to give two or three days' notice 
of your arrival. I can send to meet you, and I 
need not say with what pleasure. 

This illness of mine has been very badly timed, 
for I had hoped to go to town for a week or two, 

156 



Mary Russell Mitford 

and I should have been charmed' to have timed it 
so as to meet you there, but now I cannot venture. 
It seems as if I could bear no excitement or fatigue. 
On Thursday I was so much better as to take a 
short drive, but yesterday feverish symptoms all 
returned, and I was so ill as not to get up all day. 
To-day I am better again, and I hope the amend- 
ment will continue, but I shall gain no real strength 
until I am able to be in the air for a long time every 
day. It is a necessity with me — is the open air. 

I sent a little note in the packet to say how sure 
I felt of the success of the Chamois Shooting, and 
that I was always more fastidious with the works 
of a friend than with those of a stranger. I did 
this because, however little worth my opinion 
might be, it may still go for something with a 
bookseller, and it is only the truth. That book 
cannot fail of success. Let me know that you 
receive the packet. 

May 28, 1850. 

I have so entire a reliance upon your kindness 
and upon your knowledge of my sincere attachment 
to you, that I think it best to be quite frank with 
you, even although it seems inhospitable to be so. 
The fact is that I continue so poorly that the 
prospect of receiving you for some days, which 
would, if I were well, give me most unmixed 
pleasure, has become a source of anxiety to me. 
I have no one to supply my place in endeavouring 

157 



The Correspondence of 

to entertain you — no near neighbour even to whom 
I could delegate so pleasant an office, and I myself, 
although I have two or three times got out for 
a drive, have only left my room to get into my 
little carriage, and have been obliged to go to bed 
as soon as I returned ; nor do I seem likely to 
be soon equal to greater exertion. Under these 
circumstances you will understand how very much 
I should feel vexed that a friend whom I so much 
value should be solitary in my poor cottage, where, 
except books, there would be nothing on earth to 
contribute to his amusement, and how entirely 
this consciousness would weigh upon me and in- 
crease the inability which I so lament. 

The rooms, too, which I had hoped to secure 
for you are at present occupied, and it seems to 
me better to say this at once, and to beg you to 
let me see you as you did before for a day — 
to which I hope to be equal ; rather than to drag 
you from all the temptations of society and amuse- 
ment in London, without being able to offer you 

even my poor company here. Even Mr. , 

who could have taken you about to see what is 
worth visiting in this neighbourhood, has shown 
himself so meddling that I have ceased to have 
intercourse with him for above a year. 

Pray forgive this truth speaking. My good 
nurse-maid, who knows me better than anybody else, 
and is the best and kindest creature that lives, 
has prompted me to do so, and yet I can hardly 

158 



Mary Russell Mitford 

bear what seems so ungrateful and so inhospitable. 
Let me hear of the fate of the Chamois Shooting, 
and pray do not think ill of me. 

May 31, 1850. 
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for 
taking so kindly what it so much vexed and 
shocked me to write. I believe though that I 
was right, for I have only seen two friends, one 
on indispensable business, since I have been ill, 
and although much better on the whole, I can 
never answer for myself for two days together. 
Indeed, I believe it is consciousness of having no 
one to take my place that frets me more than 
anything. Except when I have an honoured 
guest I never feel this, for I am accustomed to 
live alone and like it — books are really enough 
for me — but I shall be charmed to see you in a 
little while, and you must be sure to let me know 
when you can come. I have much to say to you, 
and more to hear. Did I tell you that this poor 
cottage is falling to pieces, and that I have given 
notice to quit? The owner is a young boy, a 
ward in Chancery, and the Receiver under the 
Master a man who is letting all the houses go to 
ruin to save himself trouble, so that there is no 
chance of having it repaired. This grieves me 
much. 

P.S. — I should be quite well enough to see you 
for a day before you went into Devonshire. It is 

159 



The Correspondence of 

only any length of time that would try me, 
because I should then try to get up sooner and 
stay up later. For a day if it suited you, dear 
friend, I could manage quite well, and then we 
could talk over a longer visit after your return 
from Devonshire. I should not dream of having 
anybody to meet you. This is quite the truth. 

^uly 3, 1850. 

I have been sore afraid that you misconstrue my 
feelings respecting you. You must make allowances 
for my peculiar situation with regard to visitors. I 
live quite alone with no one to help me to entertain 
my friends. My health is so uncertain that I never 
can get to a friend before one or two in the day, and 
sometimes (as to-day) I do not find it possible to get 
out before four or five. I myself take what serves 
me for breakfast and dinner in bed, and am ill if I 
do otherwise. All these habits are probably bad, 
but they are so fixed that my medical friends say I 
must not change them ; that I have made my life 
and must persevere. 

If in anything I have failed, pardon it. It had 
no origin in want of regard, I assure you. Write to 
me very soon and say that you see my difficulties 
and forgive them. I have so little to offer. I have 
written fourteen articles for Henry Chorley — they 
will, I hope, do him good, and he says that they 
will make a pretty graceful book.^ They are of 

' " Recollections of a Literary Life," published in 1852. 

160 



Mary Russell Mitford 

things little known, and I think you will like them. 
Do come and let us talk it over, and your charming 
book too. 

I can't tell you how glad I was to get your letter 
and to hear I was likely to see you. I am so con- 
scious of the odd way in which I live, and of the 
real shortcoming in the way of hospitality, that 
especially when I am poorly must make itself felt, 
owing to my having nobody to supply my place, 
and living with so few servants at such a distance 
from a town, that I was really afraid I had said or 
done something insupportable, even to one so very 
kind and indulgent as yourself. Thank God I was 
mistaken ! It is only with respect to one whom I 
love dearly that I should so fidget myself; for in 
general mere acquaintances worry me, and the less 
I see of them the better ; but when I once love a 
friend I cling to him, and am in proportion vexed at 
the chance of any discomfort between us. Thank 
you heartily for your most kind letter. I shall be so 
glad to see you again. Ever since you went away 
I have been very busy. I have written the articles 
of which I send you a list. I should not wonder 
if the whole made two volumes. It is first to be 
published in " The Lady's Companion," which 
Henry Chorley is editing ; but, of course, the real 
temptation is the putting it into a book afterwards ; 
a very pretty book it will be, the extracts being for 
the most part capital and very little known, and my 
prose as good, I think, as I ever wrote. It is really 

L i6i 



The Correspondence of 

a comfort to me to find that I write no worse after 
so long a cessation. My prose is sometimes Intro- 
ductions (one in the " Our Village " style I wrote 
the Sunday night you went away), sometimes criti- 
cisms or biographies of the authors. I think you 
will like it. William Harness tells me to-day of a 
certain Barnes, a Dorsetshire poet. Ask about 
him, he says he is excellent, and you are likely to 
hear of him in the West. I had a letter to-day 
from poor Mrs. Haydon, after a silence of years. 
She says her son Frederick is coming to Reading 
and will call here. If he is here a fortnight hence, 
I hope you and he will meet. 

-I am sure that your book will be charming. 

The horse that threw Sir Robert (Peel) was a 
Berkshire horse, called Repealer. My man had 
the care of him before he came to me two years 
ago. He played no tricks then, but afterwards, 
when sold to another neighbour of mine, he used 
to throw the stable-boys who mounted him for 
exercise, and was altogether unfit for a bad rider 
like poor Sir Robert Peel to mount. 

August 8, 1850. 

Mrs. Praed, poor dear, has been nursing her 

children in scarlet fever, but has now sent me all the 

materials, memorandum book and all. It will be 

a capital article,^ so will, or rather so is, Catherine 

' C£. " Recollections of a Literary Life," i, p. 158. 
162 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Fanshawe/ and I have some fine translations by 
Leigh Hunt.- I did not think it had been 
in him. 



October 5, 1850. 
Thank you heartily for your interesting letter. 
I see what the Chamois Shooting will be by 
what the real and actual adventures are ; and 
before I forget it, let me ask you if you, while 
in England, heard talk of a novel called "The 
Initials" ?3 Mr. Lovejoy's catalogue lays it to 
Mrs. Eastlake. William Harness says that the 
authorship is a secret, and that it is attributed to 
some young men who went to board in Munich to 
acquire complete mastery over German. At all 
events it is a clever book — wants only a little of 
being very clever, and as it mentions chamois 
shooting after a fashion that rather leads one 
to apprehend it may be a woman's handiwork. 
Inasmuch as it is thoroughly unsportsmanlike, it 
will be of the greatest use to you by exciting 
curiosity about the subject without gratifying it. 
The Lion-hunting book, too, is abundant Miinch- 
hausenish — has had an article of the *' Times " 
given to it in that character, and will really do good 
to a truthful and moderate work on field-sports, so 
that these things are working for you. 

' Cf. *' Recollections of Literary Life," i, p. 249. 
2 Ibid., ii, p. 173. 3 By Baroness Tautphoeus. 

163 



The Correspondence of 

The " Initials" contains a strange homely primi- 
tive picture of Bavarian social life. A Baroness 
is shown superintending the making of soup ! — a 
Major's wife ironing her husband's shirts, and all 
the accomplished ladies of what we should call the 
middle classes — people who play and sing and speak 
languages — as doing their own cookery ! Is this 
so ? The book has had a great success, rather 
more than it deserves, but the result is that one 
believes these things. 

You are very good in wishing to know about my 
poor doings. I have written twenty-six articles. 

I shall make about forty articles, the next being 
" Chatterton." ^ You should just see what materials 
I have got for political squibs. The Rolliad and 
Probationary Odes (my own copy long lost and 
oddly recovered) — five volumes of "New Foundling 
Hospital for Wit," nine volumes of " Poetical 
Register," eleven of " Spirit of Public Journals," 
five volumes of " Peter Pindar " — the thick quarto 
of the famous "Westminster Election," when the 
Duchess of Devonshire got a vote for a kiss, and 
the thin quarto of " Poems of the Anti-Jacobins." 

Poor Henry Chorley has got the gout in his right 
hand, and really when one considers the vile trash 
of vanities, fineries, and frivolities contained in 
" The Lady's Companion," and the stern and 
earnest protest against all such trumpery held 
forth in the greater part of my articles, especially 

' Cf. " Recollections of a Literary Life," iii, p. i. 
164 



Mary Russell Mitford 

those on William Spencer and Clare, it does seem 
as strange a conjunction as ever was beheld. When 
gathered together in their own volumes they will at 
least have the merit of consistency. 

I shall see on Tuesday a lady (Mrs. Cox), my 
old schoolfellow, who inhabits the next parish to 
Bergholt, and thinks of Constable as you like him 
to be thought of At your lodgings we have just 
now a Mr. Pasmore, an artist, who is painting the 
wheelwright's shop — an interior — and will, I really 
think, make a fine thing of it ; at once rich, deep, 
and clear. Did you ever go into that curious old 
shop with its high open roof? It is singularly 
picturesque and affluent in details. I am to lend 
him K.'s little boy for a foreground figure. With 
regard to my house, this vexatious suspense still 
continues. A builder has been over it to make 
an estimate, and there is to be a new Receiver 
under the Master on the first of next month ; so, 
as new brooms sweep clean, there may be some 
chance that the repairs may then be set about, or 
rather perhaps next spring, if by any chance we 
can oret through the winter. But the builder 

o o 

declared he had never seen a place in such a 
state in his life, and how we and the pony shall 
get through the time I really cannot tell. Now 
that I have given over all ambition respecting 
flowers I have some magnificent seedling dahlias, 
some of the most beautiful either for shape or 
colour that I ever saw. It is a splendid flower, 

165 



The Correspondence of 






too, and tends to re-awaken one's old feelings. 
We had one fine seedling last year and lost it 
through overcare, but I trust to save these. Only 
think of M. de Balzac ^ being dead ! A great writer 
with all his faults, and still in middle life ! 

We have had some frightful robberies, one in 
a clergyman's house attended with murder. The 
place (which I happen to know) is wild and deso- 
late, just a fit scene for such a tragedy. All luck 
to your sport — which means little more than skill — 
and happiness, and health to you personally. 

Thank God I am in very good plight, but rather 
dreading the long damp winter which seems already 
to have besfun. The builder said he wondered 
that this house had not been the death of us all, 
especially the pony. 

November^ 1S50. 

I was just about to write to you to tell you of 
the sincere sorrow with which I heard of your 
trying illness, when this packet made its appear- 
ance (November 18, 1850), and I do not lose a 
moment in acknowledging its receipt. I have been 
delighted to hear of your recovery, and I am 
charmed with this first chapter. There is one 
thing which is the result of your living abroad 
and thinking in a foreign idiom — the use of " one " 
and "you" — (you know what I mean in the sense 

' Balzac died at Paris, August 18, 1850. 
166 



Mary Russell Mitford 

of the French " on "). We in England use " one " 
in that sense in conversation, but not often other- 
wise. Here, you begin the book with it, and carry 
it through the first page, if not through two pages. 
Of course the sooner we sret to the mountains the 
better — the chamois being the real subject of the 
book. But that play ^ must have been a curious 
thing, chiefly curious as showing how much ignor- 
ance and barbarism still exist among nations called 
civilized. I shall take all care of this MS. and 
hold it at your disposal. Is it your prince who 
is leading the Bavarian army in Hesse under the 
title of the Prince of Thurn und Taxis ? The 
general feeling about these German quarrels here 
is that the whole nation is crazy ; going to fight 
about nothing ; the king of Prussia being rather 
the worst used of all. However, we have no cause 
to talk about the follies of our neighbours, God 
knows, for all England is in one blaze of bigoted 
Protestantism, not at all unlikely to burn all the 
Catholics by way of vindicating liberty of con- 
science. To be sure the Pope has acted like an 
idiot in sending a Cardinal Archbishop of West- 
minster and a whole popish hierarchy amongst 
our No-popery population. But still I had hoped 
that in the middle of the nineteenth century we 
were above and beyond these furious religious 
cries, and I really had expected better things of 
Lord John than that he should write a furious 

^ The Oberammergau Passion Play. 
167 



Mary Russell Mitford 

letter in vindication of the Queen's supremacy. 
For my part, I hate priestcraft. Christianity, as 
we find it in the New Testament, is a very different 
matter, far more charitable and more practical, and 
by and by posterity will probably stick to the 
essence and reject much of the outward form. 

The only person who really keeps one's enthu- 
siasm alive just now is Louis Napoleon. That 
message of his is beautiful ; so were many of his 
addresses during his different journeys, and the 
manner in which he speaks of himself (so difficult 
a test) is always charming from its modesty, its 
delicacy, and its truth. There is about all he says 
a calm dignity that contrasts strongly with the 
usual tone of French exaggeration. He is too good 
for them, and I dare say will have to return to 
England poor and exiled, but leaving behind him 
a name not unworthy of the nephew of Napoleon. 

Henry Phillips ^ was here last Thursday with 
what he calls a musical poem founded on "Our 
Village." It has little of mine in it, but is very 
beautiful musically. 

All you tell me of Mr. Constable is most 
interesting. I am myself most unwilling to set to 
writing. 

^ Henry Phillips (1801-76), a musician of note in his day. 



168 



1851 



Miss Mitford continues her candid and 
undoubtedly helpful criticism of Boner's 
manuscript. She makes observations on 
some of the events of the year, and on most 
of the books she reads. She praises Cardinal 
Wiseman's prose, and puts Oliver Wendell 
Holmes as a poet above Whittier and Long- 
fellow. She finds the " Prelude " prosy, 
and declares that Wordsworth and Andersen 
will be speedily forgotten. She admires 
portions of Mrs. Browning's " Casa Guidi 
Windows," but deprecates the mixture of 
politics and poetry, and thinks that Mrs. 
Browning will certainly be expelled from 
Italy for such utterances. 

Although in June Miss Mitford assured 
her friend Mrs. Jennings that it was impos- 
sible for her to stand the pleasant fatigue of 
London — " I am so lame that I could no 

more walk over the Exhibition than I could 

169 



The Correspondence of 

fly" — in August she went to London for a 
week to see Mrs. Browning and the Great 
Exhibition. She stayed near Mrs. Browning, 
of whom she saw a great deal. She visited 
the Exhibition under the guidance of Lucas, 
the painter. While she admired the vast- 
ness, lightness, and exquisite fitness of the 
building, she did not think very highly of 
the exhibits, although she characterized 
the Indian tissues as '' poems." 

But the great event of this year was the 
removal from Three Mile Cross, where she 
had dwelt since 1820, to Swallowfield. The 
landlord refusing to do anything to the 
cottage at Three Mile Cross, Miss Mitford 
had perforce to seek a fresh abode. "If we 
had stayed much longer," she wrote, "we 
should have been buried in the ruins." She 
found what she needed, not far off, in the 
village of Swallowfield, and accomplished the 
move in the third week of September. She 
naturally felt sorry at leaving the old home. 

There I had toiled and striven, and tasted as 
deeply of bitter anxiety, of fear, and of hope, as 
often falls to the lot of woman. There, in the 
fulness of age, I had lost those whose love had 

170 



Mary Russell Mitford 

made my home sweet and precious. Alas ! there is 
no hearth so humble but it has known such tales of 
joy and of sorrow ! Friends, many and kind, had 
come to that bright garden, and that garden room. 
The list would fill more pages than I have to give. 
There Mr. Justice Talfourd had brought the 
delightful gaiety of his brilliant youth, and poor 
Haydon had talked more vivid pictures than he 
ever painted. The illustrious of the last century — 
Mrs. Opie, Jane Porter, Mr. Gary — had mingled 
there with poets still in their earliest dawn. It 
was a heart-tugf to leave that garden. . . . 

I walked from the one cottage to the other on 
an autumn evening, when the vagrant birds, whose 
habit of assembling here for their annual departure 
gives, I suppose, its name of Swallowfield to the 
village, were circling and twittering over my head; 
and repeated to myself the pathetic lines of Hayley 
as he saw these same birds gathering upon his roof 
during his last illness : 

Ye gentle birds, that perch aloof, 

And smooth your pinions on my roof, 

Preparing for departure hence 

Ere winter's angry threats commence ; 

Like you, my soul would smooth her plume 

For longer flights beyond the tomb. 

May God, by Whom is seen and heard 
Departing man and wandering bird, 
In mercy mark us for His own, 
And guide us to the land unknown. 
171 



The Correspondence of 

Thoughts soothing and tender came with those 
touching Hnes, and gayer images followed. Here 
I am in this prettiest village, in the cosiest and 
snuggest of all cabins ; a trim cottage garden, 
divided by a hawthorn hedge from a little field 
guarded by grand old trees ; a cheerful glimpse of 
the highroad in front, just to hint that there is such 
a thing as the peopled world ; and on either side 
the deep, silent, woody lanes that form the dis- 
tinctive character of English scenery.' 

The cottage was not too far from her 
favourite walks and most valued neighbours. 

February ii, 1851. 
I don't quite like the new chapter so well as the 
old ones, dear friend, and I will tell you why.2 The 
new chapter is one that talks about nothing. Now 
to do that requires exquisite charm and point, and 
taste, and grace, and above all a perfect command 
of idiom, which no one can retain who does not 
habitually speak English, read English, and think 
in English ; so that if this first chapter (by which 
so many people judge) could be shortened or filled 
with things, facts, instead of words, it would be 
better. I tell you the absolute truth for the good 
of the book. 

' " Recollections of a Literary Life," iii, p. 292. 
'^ Miss Mitford is again referring to Boner's " Chamois 
Hunting." 

172 



Mary Russell Mitford 

The first chapter will do, but it will not pre- 
possess as it should do. I know you will pardon 
me for saying this. It seems to me worth while to 
take great pains with this book, because the whole 
of the chamois shooting part is far better than any- 
thing you have ever done, and likely to make you 
a name which will be useful in every way ; so that 
it is the duty of a fastidious friend, " who is nothing 
if not critical," to give you the full benefit of her 
fastidiousness. There are such millions of books 
now-a-days that it is most difficult to win a name, 
and it can only be done by seizing happy subjects, 
and treating them in the most efficient way. Above 
all, mere wordiness must be avoided ; very few 
people indeed have the art of commanding atten- 
tion by the mere play of words, the very trick of 
style — a doubtful merit at the best, but a thing in 
which failure is more than commonly bad. Get as 
much stuff as you can, real facts for the book, and 
think rather of making it shorter than making it 
longer, and the work can hardly fail of making 
its way. 

Your letter gave me great pleasure. The attack 
on Wiseman has brought him out in full force. 
Have you read his Appeal? If not, do. I mean 
of course in English, for eloquence is well-nigh 
as untranslatable as poetry, and also read his 
" Lectures on the Hierarchy." There are passages 
in both as fine as anything in English prose. I 
saw a friend of his the other day who says that 

173 



The Correspondence of 

every post brings to the Cardinal the most frightful 
threatening letters, and only in yesterday's "Times" 
I saw an account of a mob that paraded Golden 
Square, where he lives, with a mock Pope, and so 
forth. On the whole, however, I think the agitation 
will do good. It will bring into perfect view the 
bigotries of our so-called religionists of every 
sect and of every party, and it has already called 
out a large number of persons opposing these 
bigotries. 

Mr. Roebuck has written one of his capital, 
scornful letters. Half the influential weekly 
journals are printing excellent common sense. The 
actual people — those who attend Mechanics' Insti- 
tutes, and have begun to take so high a standing 
in our country — laugh the thing to scorn. The 
" Times " of course took it up like the Minister, as a 
claptrap, but I believe Lord John repents, and we 
all know that a turn the more costs little to " the 
leading journal of Europe." When I go to London 
I mean to hear the Cardinal. He is only forty- 
nine : young to have attained so high a position ; 
a large man with a comparatively weak voice, so 
that the delivery is not equal to the writing. If 
it were, it would be perfection. There is no living 
man who approaches him in English prose. I 
prefer him to Burke. 

I have been writing little lately, having been 
unusually unwell this wet, dreary, dirty winter — the 
sort of low fever that belongs to influenza, pro- 

174 



Mary Russell Mitford 

ceeding partly from the weather, and still more 
from the incurable dampness of this old cottage. I 
do now hope to get the one at Swallowfield but 
dare not venture to expect it until all is settled ; 
certainly I cannot spend another winter here. I 
have been readings a orreat deal. Wordsworth's 
long prosy poem ^ — which I suspect nobody will 
fairly get through, so interminable is it and so 
level ; Southey's thousand and one posthumous 
works. Life and Letters and Common-place 
Books, and all the poems ; about thirty volumes 
I have been reading of Southey, prose and verse, 
and could read thirty more. The volumes of the 
"Romance of the Peerage," most interesting ; Leigh 
Hunt's Autobiography, likeable with all its faults ; 
Lamartine's "Genevieve"; "Alton Locke," a 
very curious bit of Church of England socialism, 
by a neighbour of mine, Mr. Kingsley ; and three 
striking American books — "The Scarlet Letter," 
a wild romantic tale of the elder days of Boston ; 
" Songs of Labour" ; " Poems," by John Whittier ; 
and a most striking little book called "Astraea," 
by Oliver Holmes, a poem recited before a society 
at Yale College and printed by them. We have 
had nothing like it for years. It is a com- 
bination of Goldsmith, Pope, and Dryden, but 
thoroughly native and original, full of strength and 
beauty, of pathos and power, with a graphic force 
of diction, a harmony of versification, and a general 
' " The Prelude," published 1850. 
175 



The Correspondence of 

finish that we look for in vain on this side 
of the water. What a model for our young 
poets ! 

I fully believe what you tell me of German 
politics. All seems hollow. France will, I hope, 
cleave to Louis Napoleon. The National As- 
sembly, with its old worn-out party leaders, cuts a 
deplorable figure. The English Press is almost 
universally in his favour ; all that he says bears upon 
it an impress of truth, and thought, and personal 
character of high stamp. I know no one who has 
so much profited by his own misfortunes and mis- 
takes. If God grant me life and health, I hope 
to finish two or three volumes of " Readings " 
against next autumn, and bring them out in a 
separate form.^ I heard an account of Miss 
Bremer - the other day — a little old woman, with 
milk-white hair, older, I suppose, than I am. 

I have never heard a word of Haydon's book 
or of his son. 

February 28, 1851. 
Before talking of anything else, let me say that 
the apparent change of my opinion arose partly 
from a re-perusal of the chapter in question, partly 
from the sincere conviction I entertained that it 
is the duty of a friend when appealed to on a 
question of criticism to tell the absolute truth, how- 

' " Recollections of a Literary Life." See p. 199 ei seq. 
' Frederika Bremer (1801-65), the Swedish novelist. 

176 



Mary Russell Mitford 

ever painful to both parties, partly from the very 
high hopes that I have from the first cherished with 
regard to that book, which ought to make a name 
and will do so if care be taken to weed from it 
all that is not really good. Now I am even more 
impressed with the sense of the necessity of your 
abstaining from all mere wordiness — verbiage, 
freaks of words — from the very interesting bit of 
"Chambers's Journal" that you have sent me — the 
immense difference between the introductory part 
of the writing and the description of the speeches 
that comes after. The one is absolutely bad, the 
other positively good. I see perfectly the cause 
of this. You have lost the command of the English 
language and idiom. How should you have re- 
tained it, living as you have done for eight years 
entirely apart from English people ; reading, 
writing, talking, and thinking in German '^ Some 
authors (Mr. Lever, for instance) live abroad with 
impunity, but then they are surrounded with Eng- 
lish people, their own families, and their principal 
associates being English or American. There is 
the difference. 

Did you ever see a good bowler in the intervals 
of a game of cricket tossing the ball about here and 
there, now low upon the ground, now high among 
the trees, always, amidst his seeming carelessness, 
hitting exactly the very point at which he aimed ? 
And did you doubt for a moment that it was the 
practised eye and the practised hand which pro- 

M 177 



The Correspondence of 

duced that constant truth of aim ? ^ Now this 
is what you have for the present lost, and 
therefore you must abstain from these verbal 
sports and say only what you have to say as 
simply as possible. When full of matter, when 
the reader's attention is directed to facts and 
narratives, the want of this power to gambol 
and curvet is not felt. I am not very sure that 
the use of such a power is ever very wise, even 
in those who possess it in the highest perfection, 
but mere writing^ when not of undeniable grraceful- 
ness — in short, failure in such an attempt is of all 
things the most dangerous, and would tend to 
diminish the merits of the better parts more than 
I like to think or to say. Observe that in these, 
perhaps uncivil truths, I in nothing detract from 
the real talent or charm of the book. I am only 
most desirous that the high qualities it evinces 
should not be thrown away. 

You ought to make that book your literary 
stake, and write and re-write until you have done 
the very best you can do ; because, dear friend, 
all that you say about not being able to correct is 
mere laziness. What would you say to one of your 
pupils who should make the same excuse ? Even 
to this hour I write and re-write and write again, 
and am then dissatisfied, and if I were not it would 

' Miss Mitford was a great lover of cricket. Her essay on 
*' A Country Cricket Match " in " Our Village " reveals her 
knowledge of and interest in the game. 

i;8 



Mary Russell Mitford 

be a sign to myself that I was becoming like the 
Archbishop to Gil Bias, and must leave off. 

Thank you very much for the bit of Chambers. 
Cobden is exactly true, only that in society he is 
more refined. What you tell me of Girardin is 
very interesting. Is he an illegitimate son of 
Napoleon ? He is spoilt by the instability and 
trickery of the French character, from which Louis 
Napoleon is so free, and also, I suppose, by the 
vanity. Did you ever read a very curious and 
remarkable play of his wife's, taken partly from 
one of Balzac's best novels, and partly from a story 
respecting that detestable "little piece of mischief" 
Thiers, partly from the sad end of Baron Gros, the 
pamter .-* It is called " L'Ecole des Journalistes." ^ 
She read it herself to all the most remarkable 
journalists and authors of Paris, and I read it in 
a Bruxelles edition with several feuilletons about 
it appended thereunto, especially a letter to the 
authoress by Jules Janin,^ one of his best, in which 
he calls her his " beau confrere." Do read it. The 
comedy itself is very clever, as if inspired by the 
great novel, " Un grand Homme de Province a 
Paris," which suggested it to her fancy. 

By the way, it is all the nothings which in Jules 
Janin are so charming that you must resolutely 

^ The play was produced in 1840. Mme. de Girardin's 
best-known play is the little one-act drama entitled " La 
joie fait peur " (1854). 

^ Critic and novelist (1804-74). 

179 



The Correspondence of 






abstain from imitating at present. Content yourself 
with better things. This new chapter leading to no 
result seems to me rather long. Can't you make 
an adventure or two ? Artistic truth and literal 
truth are very different. As an instance of your 
foreign idiom take " but the brightness lasts not 
long," which is not bad English, but yet is certainly 
not such as you would have written if you had 
never left your own country. It is these intangible 
niceties occurring in every page that make me urge 
upon you the putting in more matter ; so that the 
reader may never have to think of the expression. 
Do you know Cardinal Wiseman.'* It was a 
whole party of Catholics, his friends and admirers, 
who, in answer to my questions about his delivery, 
made the remark as to the weakness of his voice, 
"a small voice from a large person," always a 
disappointing thing, but both they and I were 
thinking of public speaking, which is, you know, 
very different from talking in a room. Of course 
you read his Appeal' I think that, especially 
the latter part about the title of Westminster, one 
of the finest pieces of prose in the language. He 
is a most accomplished man of letters, and that 
Appeal fairly dumbfounded the " Times " for a week. 
We are all to pieces as to a Ministry, and it is 
said that the Prince and the Queen are now so 
much afraid of the result of that folly the Grand 

' ** Appeal to the Reason and Good Feeling of the English 
People on the Subject of the Catholic Hierarchy," 1850. 

180 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Exhibition, that they will only go up to town for 
state balls and levees and drawing-rooms, and 
continue to reside at Windsor. Already the park 
is a scene of tremendous disorder. Think what it 
will be when all the mob of foreigners and of our 
own artisans shall be added to the rogues and 
pickpockets of London ! Besides which, after 
having built the trees in they will infallibly be 
cut down, and I believe everybody is agreed in 
wishing that it could have been all swept away 
and things replaced as they were. 

You will be more interested to hear that I have 
at length all but a certainty of the Swallowfield 
cottage. It will be a great expense, but I do not 
wish to quit the neighbourhood, and here I cannot 
stay ; as, although rather better, my health has 
suffered much this winter. 

You will delight in Dr. Holmes, for a doctor he 
is, being, although still quite a young man, one of 
the most eminent physicians in Boston. If you see 
the " Lady's Companion " you will find two extracts 
from his works in the next number of the most 
extraordinary point and beauty.^ We have nothing 
that approaches him for the polish and felicity of 
his diction. He is quite as remarkable for large- 
ness and justness of thought. Mr. Fields tells me 
that he sings his own gay and brilliant songs most 
exquisitely, and speaks as finely as he writes ; and 
is altogether so charming a person that people are 

' Cf. " Recollections of a Literary Life," iii, p. 21. 
181 



The Correspondence of 

ill on purpose to be attended by him. He sent me 
his own poems himself the other day, and his hand- 
writing is most clear and beautiful, and his face 
such as could belong to nobody else, with lofty 
thoughts on the brow and a sparkle of humour in 
the eye. Depend upon it, neither Longfellow nor 
Whittier are to be compared with him. I have 
written to him just as I think, and we shall 
probably be friends. 

The " Lady's Companion " is now printed 
monthly — a great improvement. Except the 
article on Dr. Holmes, I have not been well 
enough to write anything new for it since the 
autumn, but hope to give a long article on Chat- 
terton ^ shortly. They have continued to give my 
articles, but they have been those I wrote last 
summer. I still expect to bring out my own book 
in the autumn, and I hope you will like it. 

At my new home I shall be within half a 
mile of Sir Henry Russell's park and family, a 
great acquisition, for they are accomplished people, 
and he has a fine library, buys the best foreign 
books, and lends me any I want. It is the 
house where Lord Clarendon wrote his history. 
I have not heard of Andersen's book. He had a 
momentary reputation in England, but it is quite 
past and gone. We are an ungrateful people, and 
knock down our idols to avenge our own idolatry. 
You'll see that will be the case with Wordsworth, 

' Cf. " Recollections of a Literary Life," iii, p. i. 
182 



Mary Russell Mitford 

who, first underrated then overrated, will fall 
again below his proper level, ay, and very soon. 
The posthumous articles upon him would have 
driven him crazy, poor man. By the way, there 
is a flaming review of Lord Holland's book ^ in 
the last " Edinburgh " (by Lord Monteagle). I 
have been reading the book itself, which, although 
it interested me on account of Napoleon, is cer- 
tainly very inferior to the Lope de Vega book 
and the opportunities of the author. Have you 
read " Alton Locke " ? I am now reading a fine 
American work just sent me. 

The " Scarlet Letter " is not to be had in 
Eno-land. You oucrht to have seen it here. It is 
a wild tale of the Pilgrim Fathers, very striking 
and poetical. The author (Mr. Hawthorne) is 
now busy at another tale. 

April 17, 1 85 1. 
You are the most docile receiver of a criticism 
in the world ; too much so, perhaps, for you make 
me now doubt myself. I mean that you make me 
think it quite possible I have been rather nervous 
and anxious in performing an unpleasant office 
of friendship, and may have forgotten (in the case 
of the last chapter especially) that reading in MS., 
and in small portions, is really an unfair way of 
judging of a book that should be got through at 

' C£. " Foreign Reminiscences," 1850. 
183 



The Correspondence of 

a sitting. As a general rule I can safely say put 
as much matter into the volume as possible. 

I am sure of your liking Dr. Holmes. The 
manliness, the cheerfulness, the healthy searching 
spirit, the constant candour, the large charity, 
the total absence of cant, joined to a power of 
painting in words nothing short of miraculous. I 
will give you one little specimen. He is describing 
the bursting forth of an American spring and the 
spring flowers : 

The spendthrift crocus bursting through the mould, 
Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. 

There are hundreds of such lines, and the tone 
is so scholarly, so masterly. God grant that it 
make a complete change in our vile school of 
obscurity, crudeness, and self-conceit. Dr. Holmes 
is still a young man, but already one of the most 
eminent physicians of Boston, and the very idol 
of the place, being a most accomplished person, 
master of half-a-dozen languages, a charming singer 
of his own charming songs, and speaking even 
better than he writes. It is quite a treasure- 
trove. 

Mr. Fields sent me the " Astraea " with a large 
packet of books. I wrote at once my delight in 
that little volume, and I suppose my letter found 
its way to Dr. Holmes, for by return of packet 
came his collected poems, with " For Miss Mitford, 

184 



Mary Russell Mitford 

with Dr. Holmes' best respects," on the flyleaf. 
His portrait is there too, with a facsimile of his 
writing ; the countenance is fine and characteristic 
— a grand, thoughtful head, with a sparkle of 
humour in the eye. I have written him a long 
letter, and feel that we shall be friends. I don't 
think that he has been in England — his medical 
studies were completed at Paris. But all his 
works are delightfully national, without any of the 
national foibles. 

What you say of Cobden is very true indeed. 
I wish he had refrained from those foolish peace 
meetings, for I can't help thinking they have kept 
him out of power in this crisis. No doubt you are 
right about Lord Palmerston. I know that to 
many eminent artists he has been exceedingly 
insolent, which is more the way of a little man 
than a great one. I hope the Peel party may 
come in with some of the Liberals. Sir William 
Molesworth, for instance, and Mr. Grote : to get 
rid of the Greys, Elliotts, and Russells seems to 
be everybody's wish. 

I have some Catholic friends who know Cardinal 
Wiseman well, and speak of his goodness as equal 
to his talents. Certainly his Appeal was a 
thing to revel in. But I had always a weakness 
for the ancient church with its art and its poetry, 
as compared with our establishment, which, dis- 
carding all its beauty, retained only the bigotry 
and the intolerance. 

185 



The Correspondence of 

I wish you had heard Victor Hugo as well as 
Girardin. I am just reading for the second time 
his Dramas and his " Poesies," and certainly, 
allowing for some excess, some extravagance, he 
is a great dramatist. " Le Roi s'amuse" is a 
great play ; so is " Lucrece Borgia," so is " Marion 
Delorme." I wish you had heard him, although 
I believe he only reads his speeches, which we 
English are hardly contented with, and owing to 
that cause, or some fault in the delivery, they are 
called weak. I suppose people expect something 
as exciting as his tragedies. 

T have been looking at a curious volume by 
Miss Martineau and a Mr. Atkinson,' which pro- 
fesses to be a genuine correspondence, and is pre- 
ceded by four pages of mottoes, chiefly from Lord 
Bacon, whose experimental philosophy hardly 
answers for mathematics. She has taken one 
from her and my friend Archbishop Whately, 
which, considering that the book is called athe- 
istical, will hardly enchant his grace. For my part 
I should not have called it by so hard a name. 
I should rather have doubted whether either the 
lady or gentleman quite knows the exact thing 
that the letters do mean. I am sure I do not, 
and I suspect that many other of their readers will 
be in the same predicament. A very different 
book which John Ruskin has just sent me is his 

' " Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Develop- 
ment," by H. G. Atkinson and H. Martineau, 1851. 

186 



Mary Russell Mitford 

"Stones of Venice," most beautiful as to writing 
and as to decoration. It will make a great hit. 
I have finally taken the Swallowfield cottage, 
and shall move in the autumn, before which time I 
hope to finish my readings, which have been delayed 
all the winter by my being really too poorly to write. 

JiUy 20, 1 85 1. 
I do not know whether, when I last wrote, I was 
as dismally lame as I am now, or rather, whether 
the lameness had lasted so long as to become a 
settled infirmity. I rather crawl than walk, and am 
put down in the green lane at three or four o'clock 
with my little maid and my little dog and my camp 
stool, and fetched again at seven or eight o'clock, 
that I may have the air without fatigue. 

Partly this lameness, partly the absence of 
curiosity, have kept me in the country. Chairs are 
only admitted for an hour or two to the Great 
Exhibition early on the Saturday morning, and as 
Mrs. Browning has advanced as far as Paris towards 
London, I wait to know whether she really does 
mean to come to England this year before making 
up my mind to take the journey without the chance 
of seeing her. Unless she comes, I don't think I 
shall get to London. I dread the fatigue, and the 
crowd, and the excitement, and have really less 
desire to go than can well be conceived. I never 
was a sight-seer, and the more one questions people 

187 



The Correspondence of 

about this the less one finds oneself attracted. Sam, 
whom I sent, says that one-third of the stalls con- 
sists of stockings and calico, and things as common 
as that, and it is wonderful how people are cooling 
towards it. We always were a nation of idolaters : 
always avenging ourselves upon our poor idols 
for our own idolatry. We make gods of wood and 
stone, and then we knock them to pieces, as many a 
poet, first overrated then underrated can testify, 
and so we shall do by this, although to do the most 
sensible people whom I know justice, they have 
always laughed at the fashionable madness. Taken 
at the very best it is furniture, not art, and if it 
come to be a winter garden, will probably look 
better when clothed with gorgeous creepers and 
filled with fountains, and statues, and flowering 
shrubs than it does now.^ 

Mrs. Browning sent me her book.- It is a dull 
tirade on Italian politics. When I say dull and yet 
vigorously written, that sounds like a contradiction, 
but it is not so. The subject, which is not largely 
though forcibly treated, is so unreal that it excites 
no sympathy, for it seems to me out of the question 
that a people without recent poetry, without living 
literature, without even an attempt at eloquence — 
whose last great writer was Alfieri, whose sculpture 

^ A prophetic vision of the Crystal Palace, Sydenham. The 
first column of the re-erection of the building was raised 
August 5, 185 1. 

' " Casa Guidi Windows," 185 1. 

188 



Mary Russell Mitford 

has dwindled into wood-carving, whose pictorial art 
into mosaic copies, who have not even produced 
one man of mark in this general tossing up of 
nations, should be ripe for freedom and self-govern- 
ment. Year by year they seem to be dwindling. 
Even music, which held by them longest, is now 
dying away. They have still singers, but they have 
no composers. Italy is an extinct volcano. The 
very smoke is gone, and it seems to be wrong as 
well as foolish to try to provoke a struggle, which 
can only end in the reaction always so fatal to 
progress and rational liberty. Don't you agree with 
me ? There are one or two tolerable passages, but 
the metre is harsh and unattractive, and the triple 
rhyme of Dante quite unsuited to English verse ; 
and the only result of the book will be a bill at 
Chapman and Hall's, and a total exclusion from 
Italy for the writer in case she wants to return 
thither. I It will make no hit here. 

The " Stones of Venice " has a great success. 
The illustrations by the author are exquisite, and 
the writing, as always, is good, with his char- 
acteristic faults, which people almost accept for 
beauties. Hawthorne's " House with the Seven 
Gables " is even finer in the same way than ** The 
Scarlet Letter " — the legendary part dim, shadowy, 
and impressive, and the living characters exquisitely 
true, vivid, and healthful. The heroine, Phcebe, is 
almost a Shakesperian creation, as fresh and charm- 

' Miss Mitford was liere entirely mistaken. 
189 



The Correspondence of 

ing as the Rigolette of Eugene Sue. You and the 
Princess are very good in liking my poor articles ; 
and as to the " Lady's Companion," your knowledge 
of it is later than mine. I think the last proof 
I corrected was one of Fishing Songs. ^ 

SWALLOWFIELD, NEAR READING,^ 

September 27, 1851, 
You see by the date that the great tearing up by 
the roots has at last been effected. We moved last 
Tuesday, a terrible job. There were four tons of 
books ! ! ! and I had nearly died the first night, for 
K., in order to ensure my bedroom being washed 
all over every month, had had every bit of it, ceiling, 
walls, and all, painted with four coats of paint, and 
the shutters being hermetically sealed against a 
breath of air, and the night exceedingly sultry, I 
was so much affected, that every door and window 
in the house were obliged to be flung open, and 
although I have never entered that room since, I 
have hardly recovered the intolerable smell of the 
paint. In other respects I like the place. It is 
exceedingly convenient, the neighbours, high and 
low, are delighted to get us, and the drives and 
walks are charming. Indeed, in quiet pastoral 
beauty it is impossible to exceed this lovely valley 
of the Loddon, with its green water-meadows and 
its magnificent trees, quite different from the country 

I Cf. " Recollections of a Literary Life," ii, p. 264. 
= The remaining letters are all addressed from Swallowfield, 

190 



Mary Russell Mitford 

nearer Reading — more like a chase or a gentleman's 
park. About half-a-mile off is the fine house built 
by the second Lord Clarendon. 

But the great things in this place are the dryness 
and firmness of the house, and the abundance of 
water ; for at the Cross we have not had a drop, 
except what we brought from hence, for the last six 
weeks. Here we have a pump, two springs, a great 
ford and the river. I think you will like it, although 
I have no sitting-room so pretty as that at the old 
house. 

Just after I wrote to you Mrs. Browning arrived 
in town, and I went there for a week to meet her. 
A strange thing it seemed to see her walking about 
like other people. She and her husband are now 
gone to winter in Paris. I talk of meeting them 
there in the spring. They have a pretty little boy, 
but it was odd to hear the English parents and the 
English nurse talking to him in Italian. I suppose 
next year they will all talk to him in French, and 
when English will take its turn, God knows. In 
their way to England they stopped at Paris, and in 
the Louvre they thought they saw Alfred Tennyson ; 
looking at the book they found his name written 
" A. Tennyson, Rentier." (Is not that curious ?) 
So then they met and offered each other their 
houses, he having a cottage at Twickenham, and 
they not having given up their apartment at the 
Casa Guidi. By the way, I don't think they can 
return to Florence with that book, the " Casa 

191 



The Correspondence of 

Guidi Windows," against them. When I was in 
London I heard from three quarters that Mazzini 
wants to have it translated as a pohtical pamphlet. 

Mr. Lucas was so good as to make a day to take 
me to the Great Exhibition, which is just like a 
great bazaar, and neither deserves the praise some 
people give it nor the blame of others. The glass 
house is light and tasteful. The Duke of Devon- 
shire said to me a dozen years ago, " Paxton could 
make half a leaf grow," and he seems to be one of 
those who succeed in whatever they undertake. 
The British Gallery this year, filled with the very 
finest old pictures in England, seemed to me better 
worth seeing than that exhibition. 

John Ruskin (the most fashionable of all our 
authors just now) told me that he thought he should 
give up art and take to natural science. One 
capital article in my book will be Daniel Webster's 
speeches, which nobody knows. ^ I have just got 
from America a new edition of two volumes of tales 
(" Twice-told Tales ") by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with 
a most characteristic portrait and preface. The 
tales are very inferior to the fine works you have 
got. I saw a great deal of the Goldsmids when in 
London, and hope to go to Summerhill, near Tun- 
bridge Wells, the fine old house which Queen 
Elizabeth gave to Lord Leicester, and where 
Charles the Second passed so much time, and 
which Sir Isaac bought a year or two ago, just as 

' Cf. *^ Recollections of a Literary Life," ii, p. 41. 
192 



Mary Russell Mitford 

it stood, books, pictures, and all. I went the other 
day to Donnington, and over all the fields of the 
two battles of Newbury, and am certainly better of 
my lameness though still very lame. Do you know 
a charming Baroness de Klenze at Munich ? She 
was a Miss Farmer, and is a sweet creature still, 
although the mother of many children. 

November 27, 1851. 

Yes, I received your kind letter, and I ought to 
have thanked you for the details respecting Wild- 
bad, but I suppose that my own moving and my 
own book jolted everything out of my head. It 
has been an autumn of singular commotion. The 
getting this place (which had stood vacant nearly 
two years whilst lawyers were disputing about the 
property) into habitable order — the making my old 
furniture serve, which necessitated a great deal of 
cutting out and cutting down — the making carpets, 
the only things I was compelled to purchase, the 
packing and unpacking my army of books (not all 
arranged yet), the fixing shelves to hold them : then 
my book which I own I hope to finish this week — 
all these things have wearied me exceedingly ; how- 
ever, I am better to-day and yesterday, and hope 
when once my book is fairly out of hand I shall 
improve. 

I continue delighted with the situation, which is 
dry, cheerful, and full of beauty. The valley of the 
Loddon, along which the lanes extend to the back 

N 193 



The Correspondence of 

lodge of the Duke's Park, is more exquisitely rich, 
and soft, and pastoral, with its lovely water-meadows, 
its bright winding stream, and its magnificent 
timber, than anything you can imagine. There are 
bits in it worthy the pencil of Constable, and it is 
just the scenery in which he delighted. You must 
show your proficiency in the business by sketching 
it when you come to England next. 

Then I have had abundance of visitors, some old 
and valued friends. Dean Milman and his lady (the 
poet, now Dean of St. Paul's), my friend Mr. Fields, 
the young American. Did I tell you that he had 
lost his lovely young wife in her bridal year, and 
was sent to Europe for change of scene? Seeing 
him was most pleasant to me. He told me a thou- 
sand interesting things ; none more so than the 
account he gives of Hawthorne. He was in 
extreme penury. My friend Mr. Fields heard of 
it, went to him, and told him that such was his 
confidence in his powers that he would print 2,500 
copies of any work he might give him, and allow 
him 25 per cent, profit. 

" I have a chapter or two," replied the author, 
" of a little story that I mean to form part of a 
volume of tales ; but what will your partners 
say .-^ 

" Never mind my partners," said Mr. Fields, 
"I'll do it on my own responsibility: only show me 
this beginning." It was the " Scarlet Letter." 

"You must make an entire volume of this," said 

194 



Mary Russell Mitford 

my friend, and Mr. Hawthorne took his advice. 
The success is greater than ever has been known 
both in England and America, and "The House 
with the Seven Gables " is an equal hit. He is 
now busy in books for children, and one for grown 
people also — rich and happy. The remarkable 
thing is that he is as modest as a young girl, and 
thinks himself the most overrated man in all 
America. He is a splendid man personally, of 
the height and build of Daniel Webster, with a 
noble head — a magnificent creature, mind and body. 

I had the great pleasure of being the first person 
to convey to Mr. Ticknor (cousin of Mr. Fields' 
partner and also a dear friend of mine) the first 
news of Mr. Macaulay's having selected his book 
on Spanish literature, when entreated by the Queen 
to recommend one to her, as the best that had 
appeared for many years. 

Then I have had Mr. Bennoch, a common council- 
man of London, who the day before had received 
and introduced Kossuth at the Guildhall. Kossuth 
told him that years ago he taught himself English 
in an Austrian prison with only three books — Shake- 
speare, the Bible, and a Hungarian dictionary. His 
speaking is said to be something wonderful for 
raciness and diction ; that when he comes to a pause 
he coins some word that will become Eng-lish from 
its felicity, so that people listen without perceiving 
the length of his harangues. I take leave to think 
him a humbug who says one thing one day and 

195 



The Correspondence of 

another the next in order to please his audience, 
and who came here for two motives, to excite so 
much enthusiasm as might provide a Kossuth fund, 
and to stir up the people to go to war that he might 
take his chance to gain something in the scramble. 
He has succeeded in attracting an immense number 
of followers, but I doubt his getting the money, 
and am pretty sure that he will fail in the war 
speculation. 

Mr. Fields says that in America such is the 
appetite for novelty and charlatanism, that he 
should not wonder if they found out that he was 
born in the States, and made him President. Only 
he'll get no money there. Tell me, you who are 
nearer, what you think of this adventurer ? I have 
a great hatred to the people who for interested 
motives profane the great name of freedom. 
Besides, I have not forgiven his abuse of Louis 
Napoleon in that inflammatory letter of his at 
Marseilles. What do you think of him at this 
moment ? Mrs. Browning, who is in Paris, says 
that he is fully expected to be re-elected. She saw 
him alight from his carriage in the court-yard of an 
hotel the other day, and he got out laughing and 
with some difficulty, for it was filled up to his waist 
with nosegays and petitions flung in through the 
open windows. She tells me that George Sand is 
living at her chateau in Berry ; the house full of 
her own friends and her son's, who rehearse her new 
dramas before they are offered to the theatres. I 

196 



Mary Russell Mitford 

cried my eyes out over Claudie. Certainly she 
has conquered a new kingdom. Her son is a 
commonplace young man of three-and-twenty, but 
fond of his mother. 

I hear that the Brownings have had a grand 
success at Paris. I have only messages backward 
and forward from Alfred Tennyson; we have never 
met. I don't believe he talks well, but he is kindly 
and amiable — only that smoking! Neither does 
Mr. Kingsley talk well ; between his stammering 
and his discursiveness there is no sfettinof on with 
him : we have not met yet, but I hear this on all 
hands. Miss Bremer was at his house lately for a 
few hours, and if she could have staid half a day 
longer we should have met at a mutual friend's ; as 
it was, nothing passed but mutual lamentations. 
People speak well of her, as unaffected and 
pleasing. 

I have just been reading " Le Collier de la 
Reine," by Dumas, which has much interest, as 
those historical mysteries always have. Tell me 
about your book. 

I am expecting every day a visit from one of 
the most remarkable old ladies in England, Lady 
Stanley of Alderley.^ She was the daughter of 
that Lord Sheffield who edited Gibbon's works and 
wrote his Life, and in that correspondence is a 

' She was born in 1771, married Lord Stanley ot Alderley 
in 1796, and died in 1863, She was now eighty. 

197 



Mary Russell Mitford 

remarkable letter of hers, sixty years ago or more. 
She trots about the house now, like her contem- 
porary Mrs. Hughes, from six in the morning till 
eleven at night, and is just as young in mind as in 
body. She calls herself my neighbour at thirteen 
miles off, and at this time of year ! 



198 



1852 



The letters grow fewer. Miss Mitford 
was becoming almost crippled with rheu- 
matism. She continued, however, to take 
a keen interest in certain sides of public 
affairs, and retained her admiration for 
Louis Napoleon through all the vicissitudes 
of the time and was equally depreciatory of 
Kossuth and doubtful of his sincerity. 

Miss Mitford was delighted at the suc- 
cess of her new book, " Recollections of a 
Literary Life." She was overwhelmed with 
letters in its praise from enthusiastic girls, 
young poets, grave old merchants, self- 
educated men, professional men " who find 
relief from their mind-weariness in the 
soothing delights of poetry." The book is 
full of literary and personal interest and 
deals with more than seventy authors. 
From the reminiscences scattered through 

the book it would be easy to construct a 

199 



The Correspondence of 

delightful piece of autobiography, full of 
humorous and pathetic touches. The book 
is also a testimony to Miss Mitford's taste 
in literature and to her wide reading in 
what in 1852 were out-of-the-way works. 
Such authors as Ben Jonson, Cowley, 
Beaumont and Fletcher, Sir Philip Sidney, 
Izaak Walton, Colley Gibber, W. S. Landor, 
Chatterton, Marvell, Clarendon were then 
little read except by students, and Miss 
Mitford chooses specimens of their poetry 
or prose that are now in every school 
anthology. 

A curious episode in connection with the 
book which was the cause of grief to Mrs. 
Browning and to which she refers in her 
letters is worth recounting here. 

A chapter in the first volume, headed 
** Married Poets," dealt with Elizabeth and 
Robert Browning. There Miss Mitford 
told the story of the drowning of Edward 
Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett's brother, at Tor- 
quay in 1840.^ It fills barely two pages of 

' He had accompanied his sister to Torquay, where the 
doctors had sent her for her health, and was drowned while 
boating in Babbicombe Bay. The tragedy overshadowed 
her life for a long period of years. 



200 



Mary Russell Mitford 

the twenty-five composing the chapter, and 
is related with delicacy and restraint. Miss 
Mitford introduces the personal details in 
connection with Mrs. Browning by stating 
that she is too dear to her as a friend to be 
spoken of merely as a poetess, and that her 
poems have won for her the love of so many 
persons she has never met, " that it will 
gratify them without, I trust, infringing on 
the sacredness of private intercourse, to 
speak of her not wholly as a poetess, but 
a little as a woman." She continues : 

" I have so often been asked what could 
be the shadow that had passed over that 
young heart, that now that time has softened 
the first agony it seems to me right that the 
world should hear the story of an accident 
in which there was much sorrow but no 
blame." 

Mrs. Browning was living at Paris at the 
time the book came out, and a friend who 
was present at the first of a course of lec- 
tures on English Literature delivered by 
Philarto Chasles, reported to her that he 
announced a future lecture on Elizabeth 

20I 



The Correspondence of 

Barrett Browning, "the veil from whose 
private life had lately been raised by Miss 
Mitford." Then another friend told the 
Brownings that the passage in question was 
quoted in the "Athenaeum" review of the 
book. Mrs. Browning, terribly upset by 
the idea of a publicity her sensitive soul 
abhorred, could not bear to read the notice 
herself, but asked her husband to read it 
out to her. This he did with omissions, 
at the same time assuring her that, for the 
facts to be given at all, they could not 
possibly have been set forth with greater 
delicacy. Mrs. Browning's first feeling was 
vexation that she could not be angry with 
Miss Mitford ; she could not help recog- 
nizing the affectionate intentions, while 
deploring the obtuseness of understanding. 
At length she wrote to Miss Mitford, 
describing the wretchedness the revelation 
had caused her. " It will prove how hard 
it is for the tenderest friends to help pain- 
ing one another, since you have pained 
me." Miss Mitford replied that she would 
rather the whole book had perished than 



202 



Mary Russell Mitford 

that it should have given her friend a 
moment's pain. Whereupon Mrs. Brown- 
ing acknowledged that her sensitiveness on 
those matters amounted almost to disease, 
and was doubtless very hard for others to 
comprehend. 

The painting of her portrait by Lucas 
this year was also a great pleasure to Miss 
Mitford. In a letter to the Rev. Hugh 
Pearson (April 30, 1852) she wrote: " It is 
the expression that is so w^onderful-looking, 
not perhaps as I ever do look, but as by 
some remote possibility I might be dreamt 
to look." 

January 21, 1852. 
I have escaped, through urgent business, seeing 
Edward Lytton's play. Dickens and his troop 
came to Reading to act it on that very night, and 
civilly reserved me a ticket and a seat till the last ; 
but I had not completed my labour till half-past 
seven o'clock, when I was forced to send in to 
Reading to save the post, and was far too much 
exhausted to think of play-going. The miss of 
the dramatic affair was a great escape. Only 
fancy the thing lasting from eight o'clock till near 
two. My neighbours, the Russells, did not get 

203 



The Correspondence of 

home with their blood horses until twenty minutes 
after two, and they are never forty minutes or 
thirty-five coming from Reading, being nearer than 
I am. I have always observed that amateurs of 
all kinds never weary of hearing themselves, but 
in this case the audience were tired to death ; for, 
except Dickens in the farce, all was wretched. 

Since then my kind neighbours have been in 
great trouble. You will, of course, have seen an 
account of the terrible loss of the new steamer, the 
Amazon, by fire.^ One of the passengers aboard 
her was Eliot Warburton, author of "The Cres- 
cent and Cross." 2 If you know that charming 
book you will remember the part *' R." plays 
in it ; indeed his mind is reflected throughout the 
work, especially in the first volume. Well, this 
friend and fellow-traveller was young Henry Rus- 
sell, Sir Henry's eldest son, one of those fine 
spirits who are pretty sure to pass away early. 
He is dead of consumption, and the loss of his 
favourite friend in this deplorable manner has 
renewed all their grief. They speak of Mr. War- 
burton as even more remarkable for temper, 
character, conduct, and conversation than for his 
high literary power. So generous, high-spirited, 

' The West India mail steamship left Southampton on her 
first voyage, January 2, 1852, and was destroyed by lire about 
no miles W.S.W. of the Scilly Isles: 102 out of the 161 
aboard perished. 

= Published 1845. 

204 



Mary Russell Mitford 

and unselfish that he was sure to stay till all women 
and children and old men were saved, although 
no life could be more valuable than his own, for 
he had married a sweet woman of high family and 
small fortune, and had two young children entirely 
dependent on his exertions. What is worse, he 
was sent on a semi-official mission which he was 
certain to have executed so admirably as to ensure 
future employment. He may yet be saved, but 
there is little hope of it. 

I continue delighted with my house, although the 
over-work of the correction of the press and this 
damp weather have tried me a good deal. At the 
other house I should have died of the two. They 
have taken down the outbuildings on either side, 
and you never saw anything so miserable as what 
is left. I think it will fall down altogether. 

You are quite right about my neighbours. I am 
here among people of a high class, and they treat 
me as if I were a greater lady than themselves, 
respecting my ways and habits, and contriving in 
every way to make all pleasant to me. 

Is not Louis Napoleon a fine fellow ? I have no 
patience with our press for trying to drive our weak 
and ungracious ministry into measures that may 
force him into war — a war which every letter from 
France says would be so popular with army and 
people, and for which we are so entirely unprepared. 

Mrs. Browning says that Paris was with him 
from the first to the last, so say three or four 

205 



The Correspondence of 

other friends of mine, who have been there since 
the autumn. Mrs, Browning says that the courage 
and activity shown in the coup d'Hat have never 
been surpassed. She tells me some capital stories 
of Emile de Girardin, and says that the Prince 
says of himself that his life will have had four 
phases — one all rashness and imprudence, neces- 
sary to make his name known, and to make his 
own faults known to himself; the next the com- 
bat with and triumph over anarchy ; the third the 
consolidation of France and pacification of Europe ; 
the last un coup de pistolet. The passion of parties 
is so excited, that the only thing which renders the 
last improbable is the sort of fate by which men 
of that very high and calm courage often escape 
dangers by braving them. 

Is not Kossuth an intolerable firebrand ? I 
don't think his popularity will last long, either 
here or in America. A friend of mine writes me 
from London that his little boy (a child of eight 
years old), being at a twelfth-night party, drew 
the king. " Ah, le Roi ! " cried the boy. " Je ne 
veux pas etre Roi ! lis sont tous des Tyrans ! " 
His parroting begins early. 

Mrs. Browning says it is certain that Dumas' 
four hundred or five hundred volumes are all 
written by his own hand, like the Prince President's 
decrees. I always thought they were, by the odour 
of Dumas sprinkled over them. He is only helped 
by notes collected and reading done. He is said 

206 



Mary Russell Mitford 

to be a kind, good-natured, thoughtless person, 
a negro child — in debt at this moment; one who, 
if he wanted bread, would spend his last napoleon 
in buying a pretty cane instead of food. 

I have just now a very tine racy poem by Long- 
fellow, " The Golden Legend," breathing of Ger- 
many, and quaint old towers and grand cathedrals, 
and all the pageantry of the Middle Ages, full of 
local colour. I don't know that it will be popular, 
but in my mind it leaves all that he has done a 
million of miles behind. I know no living poet 
who could have written it. There is an out-of-door 
sermon which one can fancy preached at Paul's 
Cross before the Reformation. 

Tell me what is thought of Louis Napoleon 
in Germany. Remember you owe me two letters 
now. 

March 17, 1852. 
My book " has been waiting I cannot tell how 
long for a safe conveyance to London. Week 
by week, almost day by day, I have been expecting 
that excellent and most trusty man of business, 
Mr. Bennett. He has already four children, and 
may have a dozen more. By the way, I have lost 
two dear friends lately in child-bed, one of them, 
Mrs. Praed (wife of a London banker, and sister- 
in-law of the poet), of her ninth, the other, a 

^ " Recollections of a Literary Life," 3 vols., published 
1852. 

207 



The Correspondence of 

Cameron of Lochiel, of her twenty-second child ! 
the last expected to die. Mrs. Praed, a lovely 
woman of thirty-two, wrote to me in the highest 
spirits the day before her confinement. Mr. May 
says that the number of deaths in this way this 
winter exceeds any since the year the Princess 
Charlotte died, so that the medical men do not 
talk of the matter. 

Poor Mrs. Eliot Warburton is in the family 
way. She clings to the hope that her husband 
is still alive ; and his brothers, although confident 
there is no such chance, encourage the belief until 
after her confinement, so very terrible was the 
first effect of the news upon her. She was for 
some time quite frantic. A curious circumstance 
about the Amazon is the manner in which a 
dash of superstition saved the life of Lord Sheffield. 
He had paid for his passage, but forfeited it 
because the vessel sailed on a Friday. 

I hope you will like my book. I never wrote any 
one that produced so many letters from friends and 
strangers. I think that I have not received less 
than fifteen to twenty a day, many of them from 
persons of the very highest accomplishment, 
several of whom will, I feel, be friends. It seems to 
please those best whom one most wishes to please, 
the true lovers of literature. But you must not 
expect a biography. It is rather a book of 
criticism mingled with a good deal of anecdote 
and little bits of personal gossip, which people like 

208 



Mary Russell Mitford 

chiefly, I think, on account of the style, and which 
you will like from old kindness. I have also 
quantities of books. One volume of poems, 
published under the name of Mary Maynard, is 
of singular beauty, and must make its way after 
the usual probation. By the way, she has sent 
me some MS. translations of your favourite poet, 
Uhland, which are exquisite. I never read trans- 
lations so like originals in harmony and vigour. 
One, of the noble ballad of Taillefer, is especially 
fine. Between ourselves, Mary Maynard is not 
her name.^ So far she has told me, although the 
true name I do not know. Her own family are 
ignorant of her having published, which has been 
done on the persuasion of our dear friend, John 
Ruskin, who is now at Venice, finishing his 
" Stones." I find by a letter from another friend 
(James Fields, the American now at Rome), that 
our laureate has left behind him some curious 
stories in Italy. He quitted Florence because he 
could not get any good tobacco ! 

Mrs. Browning has become acquainted with 
Madame Sand, and is charmed with her simplicity 
and nobleness ; very quietly dressed, of the most 
unpretending manners, and not a cigarette to be 

" She was a Miss Eliza Fall, a great friend of the Ruskins, 
near whom she lived at Heme Hill. Her brother Richard 
was a friend of John Ruskin when a young man. She wrote 
some poems that were published in a little volume for private 
circulation. 

O 209 



The Correspondence of 

seen ! While the EngHsh papers were saying that 
she was exiled by Louis Napoleon, she came to 
Paris to solicit from him a commutation of sentence 
for her friend, Marc Dufraiss'=' ! He received her 
with the greatest kindness, shook hands with 
her, and granted her request. 

The worst news I have to give you is my 
lameness. I stayed in that damp house too long ; 
still, I was getting better day by day. Then came 
a glut of rain, and the rheumatism seized my knees 
and ankles. Now we have east wind and frost, 
which is as bad. Mr. May prohibits the pony 
chaise, which I have not entered for nearly three 
months, and can hardly walk at all. I cannot stand 
upright — go quite double — and Sam is forced to 
lift me from step to step to get upstairs. Mr. 
May says that warm weather will set all to 
rights, but when warm weather will come, heaven 
knows. There is not a sign of spring in field 
or hedgerow ; not a bird on the trees, or a prim- 
rose in the flowery lanes. The only symptom 
of the season is a little shepherd boy, who drives 
his pretty flock of ewes and lambs to water, at 
a ford opposite my window. To be sure Mr. 
Bennett is coming, who always brings rain. We 
continue equally delighted with the house. 

May 20, 1852. 
Thank you for your most kind and welcome 
letter. Thank you for liking my book. It has 

210 



Mary Russell Mitford 

several times been reprinted in America, where it 
is by far more popular than anything I ever wrote, 
and Galignani has just reprinted it at Paris. Every 
day I get books upon books and from ten to twenty 
letters about it from all sorts of people and all 
places. Only yesterday the wife of President 
Sparks (the head of the great American College 
of Cambridge, near Boston) wrote to me to beg 
me to come with Sam, and K., and Fanchon, and 
the pony, and live three or four years with her and 
her husband ; and really this is only a specimen of 
the enthusiasm created. 

Another thing you will be glad to hear. Mr. 
Bentley took the same fancy for a portrait that you 
have long had, so Mr. Lucas came down here and 
has made a marvellous work of art — a portrait as 
like as that of my dear father, and far more wonder- 
ful considering the materials he had to work on. 
It is an oval of the size of life. The head finished 
like a miniature, the rest more slightly painted ; 
but the thing is a wonder of truth and ideality. The 
expression sweet, and calm, and happy — looking 
not as I suppose I ever do — but as one might fancy 
it just possible I might do when thinking of some 
one whom I loved. A vulgar painter would have 
fallen into the trap of over-animation, which in an 
old woman especially is dangerous, but Mr. Lucas 
has exquisite taste. It is now in the hands of the 
engraver ; so is a miniature taken when I was 
between three and four years old, which is likely 

211 



The Correspondence of 

to be engraved by two artists. I think I can 
promise you a copy of this. I have promised Mr. 
Lucas to sit for another portrait — a full-length — 
in his own studio, where of course the light will 
be much better than in my little parlour. All this 
sounds as if I were well, but I continue so lame 
that I am forced to be lifted in and out of the pony 
chaise and from step to step upstairs at night, and 
I feel so heavy and helpless that I seem to cumber 
the earth. 

The east wind after staying with us for ten weeks 
has at last changed, and we have leaves on the 
trees, and nightingales in the woods, and the 
wandering bird from which this pretty place takes 
its name has appeared over our pools and our 
bright river, I like our little house more and more, 
although I have lost the kind and accomplished 
friend and neighbour who so worthily filled the 
mansion where Lord Clarendon wrote his history. 
The family, however, remain, and I trust I shall 
not lose the charming young woman — poor Sir 
Henry's eldest daughter — who is my chief com- 
panion. She is a great admirer of the President, 
although not quite so fervent as I am. Mrs. 
Browning too is quite carried away by his ability. 
She sent me word that Madame Sand (with whom 
she had become well acquainted) went to him to 
beg the release of some of Les Rouges, and commu- 
tation of sentence for others. He granted her 
request, spoke to her in the kindest manner, shook 

212 



Mary Russell Mitford 

hands with her, and said at parting — " Vous 
verrez, vous serez contente de moi." — " Et vous," 
she replied, " vous serez content de moi." I firmly 
believe that he is the greatest man since the 
Emperor. 

I cannot thank you enough for all that you have 
told me of him and the Countess Stephanie's 
family. Was not Count Tascher de la Pagerie 
a nephew of the Empress Josephine ? I think 
I remember reading of him as a young man serving 
under the Emperor, going through all the grades, 
and looked after rather more than less strictly for 
the connexion which was affectionately recognized 
in private. There is nothing more remarkable in 
the fine, heroic character of Louis Napoleon than 
the attachment he shows to all old connexions, and 
the way in which he recognizes and returns twenty- 
fold all kindnesses shown to him in his unpros- 
perous days. I am expecting every day a visit 
from my friend Mr. Fields, who has passed the 
last month in Paris, and been at all the balls and 
fetes in virtue of his intimacy with the American 
consul, whose family he has accompanied every- 
where. He is to bring me all he can pick up of 
portraits, biographies, works and speeches, etc. — I 
dare say fifty books at least — having as the great 
publisher of America connexions with all the chief 
booksellers of Paris. He says that none of the 
portraits do justice to that pale, earnest face, so 
full of deep feeling — that it is completely the face 

213 



The Correspondence of 

of a man of genius and of sensibility ; the calm being 
of course that sensibility strongly repressed. 

If I write another book I shall certainly give an 
article to him, for the injustice done to him by 
English newspapers and English books is revolting. 
It is only amongst high natures that one meets with 
his advocates. Old Lady Stanley of Alderley is one. 

How I rejoice that your book is coming out ! 
I feel sure of its success. The charm of Bath to 
me, at least the principal charm, was Prior Park, 
where I passed most of my time with the fascinat- 
ing Bishop Baines, who died the succeeding year. 
He was the head of the English Catholics, and 
would have prevented their subsequent false steps 
had he lived — knowing the national character well. 
Continue to talk to me of Louis Napoleon and 
yourself. 

The following letter is to John Ruskin's 
father, John James Ruskin. He showed 
Miss Mitford much kindness in these last 
years of her life. Her affection for and 
admiration of his son touched him deeply. 

Miss Mitford to John James Ruskin. 

July I, 1852. 
Your most kind letter and packet found me very 
poorly in bed, and have done me as much good as 
even your kind heart would wish. . . . 

214 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Next to your goodness, which shows itself in a 
thousand forms, the thing that so pleased and 
roused me was that charming volume. If your 
son had never written a line of verse in his life 
he would still have been among the greatest of 
English poets — for that eloquent prose with its 
glorious rhythm and its descriptions which we see 
is poetry of the very highest class — poetry that will 
last as long^ as the lanoruagre and continue fresh 
through its changes, or rather help to preserve it 
from change like the kindred pages of Jeremy 
Taylor. Still I love to see the faculty in its 
various forms — and certainly he may be as distin- 
guished in the one as in the other if ever he 
should turn his attention that way. I confess that 
metre goes for much in my pleasure also, and 
perhaps my delight in those fine Scythian Poems, 
which is quite equal to yours, may be partly trace- 
able to that cause — but surely there is great power 
also. We are not entirely carried away by sound. 
The Gipsies has for me a charm of subject as well 
as of execution. I have seen much of the wander- 
ing race. They are not all destitute of religion. 
The clergyman of my late parish told me that in 
christening a gipsy child he was surprised to find 
the mother knowing the responses, indeed the 
whole service by heart — and she was of a roving 
tribe, not one of those partly reclaimed by the 
efforts of Mr. Crabbe of Southampton, who, aided 
by wealthier men, has done more for them in the 

215 



The Correspondence of 

way of educating the children and civilizing the 
parents than had been thought possible. After all 
they are a great mystery — language, country, race 
— a mystery that will never be solved, since even 
their own traditions stop short of their origin.^ I 
should never finish if I were to tell you all I admire 
in a volume so remarkable for precocious power. 
To come to less spiritual things, let me thank 
you heartily for your most kind attention in send- 
ing me this rare wine. My expected guests are 
Americans, and although those whom I see are 
probably amongst those who care least for such 
matters, yet they are, I fancy, universally connois- 
seurs in wine, and it is pleasant to be able to offer 
them what they like. One of those whom I expect 
is the very best specimen of the nation that I have 
ever seen — a partner in Ticknor's great publishing 
house at Boston. He (Mr. Fields) raised Haw- 
thorne by his judicious patronage from poverty to 
competence — indeed actually saved him from starva- 
tion — and he is now diffusing through the States 
(not pirating, but paying the writers as if they were 
American authors) such books as the collected 
works of De Quincey (seven volumes), which no 
English bookseller would venture to publish, so 
much of taste and acquirement does it demand 
from the reader. Besides which he is a most 
charming person — bold, frank, and genial ; and of 

^ It is worth while to compare a charming passage on 
gipsies in " Recollections of a Literary Life," i, pp. 146-9. 

216 



Mary Russell Mitford 

his kindness to me you may judge when I tell you 
that he has promised to take our poor little boy 
under his especial protection to place him in his 
own store. We are to send him to Boston in five 
years, when he will be fourteen — his mother is 
charged to do so if I be dead — and if the child 
continue as hopeful as he now is he cannot fail 
to achieve an honourable independence. You may 
imagine the anxiety which this most kind assurance 
(he has even sent us letters to his brother and his 
partners in case of his own death) has taken from 
my mind.' 

I have had a charming letter from Mr. John 
Ruskin, dated Venice ; and I take the freedom 
to enclose my answer to you, who will, I suppose, 
be beginning to expect him. 

Miss Mitford to Charles Boner. 

July 19, 1852. 
Your kind letter found me confined to my bed, 
with a violent attack of fever, from which — after 
a severe illness of nearly a month — I am just re- 
covering. I have not been well since Christmas, 
and indeed for two or three years I have been 
failing much. I lived too long in that miserable 

^ The arrangement, however, seems ultimately to have 
fallen through, for on July 14, 1858, Ruskin encloses in a 
letter to his father one from Miss Mitford's former servant 
K., asking him, for Miss Mitford's sake, to try and get the 
boy a situation. 

217 



The Correspondence of 

cottage. If I had been there now I should have 
died ; but here I have the coolest house possible, 
seated upon a little ascent which seems to catch 
every breeze, and yet shaded by fine old trees 
from the sun, free from dust and noise, looking 
upon cool water and green fields, and with the best 
and kindest neighbours in the world. Lady Russell, 
who had not been beyond her park gates since her 
husband's death till my illness called her, comes 
every night to see me with her daughters — sweet 
young women — so that it is like a sister and 
nephews and nieces ; and, besides, all the rest of 
the people are full of attention. So is dear Mr. 
May, so are K. and Sam, and at last I am getting 
better, but very slowly. Indeed, dear friend, I do 
feel for you in the loss of Madame de Bonstetten. 
I can conceive nothing more dreary than the 
loneliness of a great house. 

I do hope that your book will be very successful, 
and give you pleasure and profit in one. Since I 
have been ill I have been reading Mr. Hawthorne's 
new romance (not, I believe, even yet published). 
I read it in the actual copy, that when I had done 
it went to the author, and was the first sight he had 
of his own thoughts in print. It is called " The 
Blithedale Romance," and is a book of the present 
state of New England ; full of beautiful writing, 
with a grand tragic construction, and one or two 
scenes of great power and passion ; nevertheless, 
to me there is a want of reality ; the characters 

218 



Mary Russell Mitford 

are too exceptional, and an honest old farmer, who 
has nothing to do with the story, and is not men- 
tioned half a dozen times, is the only person I like, 
simply because he is flesh and blood.' 

I have charming letters from Mr. Hawthorne, 
so entirely unspoilt, and from dear Dr. Holmes 
(my pet of all, whose poems are reprinted here in 
consequence of my book), and from most of their 
other worthies ; and dear Mr. Fields means to take 
little Henry into his own great house at Boston. 
We are to send him to America when he is four- 
teen, or rather his mother is, whether I live or die, 
so he is nobly provided for. 

These are pleasant things : on the other hand 
I have lost one of the friends whom I had learnt 
to love most fondly — Mrs. Robert Dering. We 
had never met, although her charming sister. 
Miss Shee (they are sisters of Sir George Shee, 
who is, I think, our ambassador at Stuttgart, 
certainly an ambassador somewhere), a most 
charming woman, had come to see me. With 
Mrs. Dering I had only corresponded, but never 
in my life read letters so full of a sweet and winning 
affectionateness, of personal charm — a charm like 
the scent of flowers — (you will find something of 
this in her poem called "Church Services," in my 
book). She was in the prime of life, happy as 
a wife, and mother of one hopeful son. She had 
not been well, and the last letter I had from her 

^ This is excellent criticism of the story, 
219 



The Correspondence of 

was in pencil. Then came the news that she 
was dead. Amongst other kindnesses she had 
sent me some exquisite cHmbing roses from Hert- 
fordshire, to clothe the front of my house. Now 
her flowers are blossoming under my windows, 
and she is gone ! ^ 

Just before my illness I had a visit from two 
ladies from Paris. One of them, a splendid old 
woman of seventy-six, had known my father and 
mother before their marriage, had been present at 
their wedding, had been trusted — herself a child of 
eleven — to hold the baby, and had never seen 
any of us after we moved from Alresford. You 
may imagine how much she was struck and in- 
terested when she met in my book with notices of 
all the places and people whom she remembered 
so well. She was full of life and enthusiasm, and 
went away promising to come and spend a day 
with me next summer. She is far more likely to 
see next summer than I am ! The Browning-s are 
in London. Mr. Ruskin is also expected here 
from Venice this week. This is all I know, dear 
friend, and much for a sick woman. 

Write me anything you hear of Louis Napoleon. 
I have been reading his works, which I got in 
three volumes from Paris. How very beautiful 
some of them are, especially the narrative of the 
Strasburg affair in a letter to his mother. By 
this it appears he was engaged to his cousin the 

' C£. " Recollections of a Literary Life," ii, p. 134. 
220 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Princess Mathilde, now the wife of Count Anatole 
Demidoff. Do read them. There is also a little 
bit upon exile and a preface to his history of 
Artillery, which are most interesting. Also I 
have a fine bust of him and another of Beranger, 
brought me by Mr. Fields, and two memoirs of 
Louis Napoleon. He is a really great man. Do 
you know Emilie Carlen's novels?^ "The 
Birthright " has been well translated by a young 
lady whom I know, one of the richest heiresses 
in England, Miss Percy, of Guy's Cliff. 

September 26, 1852. 
Thank you heartily for your most kind and 
welcome letter, especially for all that you tell 
me of Louis Napoleon. What a romance it is ! 
and how completely he justifies my predilection ! 
I know you will always tell me any authentic 
stories of this great man, and of her who is to 
be, or is not to be, his wife. She seems fit to 
take place at his side, and yet I am not sure 
that a well-educated, healthy, handsome French 
girl might not do just as well. One has a pre- 
judice against princesses out of Germany ever 
since Marie Louise, and I dislike the marriage 
of relations, although in this instance not near. 
However, Providence has worked admirably for 
him hitherto, aided by that first and rarest of 

' Emilie Flygare-Carlen. The translation of "The Birth- 
right" appeared in three volumes in 1851. 

221 



The Correspondence of 

his faculties, which has through life turned every 
misfortune and difficulty to account, making of 
his prison the best college, and letting the enmities 
and distractions of the National Assembly con- 
duct to the salvation of France on the 2nd of 
December. Thank you for all you have told me 
again and again. 

Now you will ask to know of me. I am 
much better, although the low fever which pros- 
trated me in the summer comes and goes, and 
will not be entirely vanquished. But even that 
has its bright side. You have heard, of course, 
of William Harness, the celebrated London 
preacher, and still more celebrated talker? He 
has been the chosen friend of all that is eminent 
for the last half century, ever since he was a 
boy at Harrow, where Lord Byron contracted 
the love for him that made him offer him the 
dedication of the " Childe Harold." 

Well, about six weeks ago he heard how ill 
I had been and still continued, and came to see 
me ; and finding me even more changed than 
he expected, he resolved to establish himself close 
by and take care of me. Accordingly, in a few 
days, he left Deepdene and Mr. Hope's delightful 
conversation, came to Swallowfield, hunted up a 
lodging, and spent three weeks with no other 
purpose or employment. Nothing could be more 
judicious than his way of going on. He never 
made his appearance at my cottage till two o'clock, 

222 



Mary Russell Mitford 

when we drove out together. Then he went to 
his lodgings to dinner, partly not to give trouble, 
but chiefly to give me two or three hours of 
perfect rest. At eight he and the Russells came 
to tea, and he read Shakespeare till bedtime. He 
is by very far the finest reader I ever heard, 
and no pleasure can be higher than hearing that 
greatest of poets so rendered. Under this pleasant 
treatment no wonder that I improved. The 
Hopes too came to spend a morning here — the 
accomplished and elegant gentleman who bears 
the weight of eighty thousand a year, with most 
delightful simplicity and unaffectedness, and who 
is that rare thing a son worthy in taste and 
talent of a most distinguished father — the pretty, 
pleasant, French wife, and the lovely little girl 
(now about nine years old, as light and buoyant 
as a bird) who will be the richest heiress in 
England, Never was a child ^ more admirably 
trained, so that in her case one hopes she may 
escape the evils of a destiny full of danger. 

My admirable friend has left me now, but he is 
to return in November, having even retained his 
lodgings, and I have been occupied with a series 
of visitors ever since. Last week we had three 
parties, arriving at two o'clock and staying till the 
last train. Two of my guests were Mr. Holloway, 
the printseller, and his very nice and clever wife. 
I tell you of them because I know that you will be 
^ She married the sixth Duke of Newcastle. 



The Correspondence of 

pleased to hear their errand. Mr. Dillon, one of 
our merchant princes, whose collection of engravings 
would sell, they say, for ;^6o,ooo, and is one of the 
finest private collections in the world, has com- 
missioned Mr. Holloway to illustrate a copy of my 
"Recollections" at an unlimited expense, to spare 
nothing for the purpose, but to render it as perfect 
as money can make it. Now Mr. Holloway is 
celebrated for these luxuries of the library ; he has 
achieved such triumphs before, so that Mr. Dillon 
(as he well knows) will have all that taste and skill 
and experience can bring to the aid of his own 
munificent order. 

Mr. Holloway says that it will be the most 
magnificent copy of any modern book. The 
"Recollections" are to be let into seven or eight 
quarto volumes, and he brought in the first volume 
to show me. Such a collection of gems of art I 
never beheld. The rarest and finest portraits, 
often many of one person and always the rarest 
and the best, ranging from the noble minds of our 
great old poets, from the Charleses and the Crom- 
wells, to George Faulkner (of whom, by the way, 
none was thought to exist, until this copy turned 
up accidentally in a supplementary volume of Lord 
Chesterfield) ; the most curious old prints of old 
houses — one, for instance, taken some two hundred 
years ago (I think before the siege) of Donnington 
Castle, and besides the print the very identical 
drawing from which that print was made. Nothing 

224 



Mary Russell Mitford 

can go beyond this. Beautiful modern drawings, 
by living artists, sent expressly to the spots that I 
mention — you would recognize much of the scenery 
where we have walked together ; — scarce and 
characteristic autographs — a very fine one of Pope 
— nothing is too odd for Mr. Holloway. There is 
a full-length portrait of George III in colours, so 
like that the old king seems really alive — not a 
caricature, but almost producing the effect of one 
by the perfection with which the peculiarities are 
hit off You may imagine that this is very gratify- 
ing. The number of proper names and names of 
places, of course, had something to do with the 
choice (as I hear that two other persons are 
illustrating the book in a less elaborate manner), 
but a liking for the writer as a writer (for, 
personally, I am acquainted with none of them) 
has its full share. It is the only work which Mr, 
Dillon has ever thought of illustrating, and will live 
alone amongst his magnificent engravings.^ 

Yesterday I had my dear friend Mr. Bennoch 
with two artists ; one of London, the other (Mr. 
Thompson) from America. The London artist is 
about to realize a fancy of mine, and to paint the 
signing of the letters to William the Third in the 

^ Miss Mitford's small volumes became six royal quarto 
volumes ; each cost ;^i5o. Miss Mitford only lived to see 
the first volume. Dillon had illustrated "Childe Harold" in a 
most elaborate manner. The single volume as published by 
Murray became eight large imperial folio volumes and cost 
an almost fabulous sum. 

P 225 



The Correspondence of 

Crypt of Lady Place ; you will find my idea of it in 
the chapter on Mr. Noel. He is a young man, 
very modest, but Mr. Bennoch says very full of 
talent. Mr. Bennoch is another of our merchant 
princes, a man of great talent, a fine speaker, and 
true poet, who will, they say, some day or other 
represent the City, and who, having no child, spends 
his laroe fortune in g-oodnesses and kindnesses. I 
have not seen the Brownings, though they talk of 
coming. Poor Lady Lovelace is dying of internal 
cancer, suffering martyrdom. The Duke ^ has 
really left no will, only a few memoranda. This is 
certain, in spite of the newspapers. The new Duke 

told it to Mr. . The article in the " Times " 

was written by Macaulay, but by far the best 
character of the old Duke is a very noble poem in 
" Punch." The poor people here tremble for their 
work, for the Duke employed largely. I fear for 
the trees ; nobody can guess how Lord Douro will 
turn out. I suppose nobody ever succeeded to a 
large property at the age of forty-five of whom so 
little was known in his own place. He is handsome 
and exemplary but cold. 

When is the " Chamois Shooting" to come out ? 
There is a great dearth of striking books. I have 
been much interested lately by the production, only 
last week, of an oratorio called " Jerusalem," at the 
Norwich Festival. The composer, Mr. Henry 
Pearson, who has lived for the last twelve years in 

' Duke of Wellington, died September 14, 1852. 
226 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Germany, and is married to a German lady, is the 
brother of the person whom, next to the Russells, 
I love best hereabouts, the Rev. Hugh Pearson, 
Vicar of Sunning, that choice thing a lover of 
poetry, and a thorough man of letters, who is no 
author. 

The Oratorio was a complete ovation, so far as 
the audience was concerned, and appears from the 
critiques to be a work of real genius, but startling 
from its novelty. He will take a great place among 
musicians. 



227 



1853 



Towards the end of December, 1852, Miss 
Mitford had a serious accident. She was 
thrown out of her pony carriage, and the 
lack of power in her limbs already caused 
by rheumatism was greatly increased ; indeed 
she was unable to move without assistance. 
Her mind was in no way affected, and her 
letters are as full of interest as ever. 

She was considering the publication of a 
further volume of literary recollections, and 
intended that some of the chapters should 
deal with French writers. 

James Payn, to whose visits she refers, ^ 
sought her advice in literary matters at this 
period, and has described her as a " dear 
little old lady, looking like a venerable fairy, 
with bright sparkling eyes, a clear incisive 
voice, and a laugh that carried you away 
with it." Again he writes : 

' See p. 250. 
228 



Mary Russell Mitford 

" I was ushered upstairs (for at that time, 
crippled by rheumatism, she was unable to 
leave her room) into a small apartment, lined 
with books from floor to ceiling, and fragrant 
with flowers ; its tenant rose from her arm- 
chair with difficulty, but with a sunny smile 
and a charming manner bade me welcome." ^ 

Boner suggested that Miss Mitford should 
try the cure at Wildbad, but so long a 
journey was out of the question in her state 
of health. 

She saw much of Charles Kingsley this 
year, and he has left on record his impres- 
sions of her : 

" I can never forget the little figure rolled 
up in two chairs in the little Swallowfield 
room, packed round with books up to the 
ceiling, on to the floor — the little figure with 
clothes on, of course, but of no recognized or 
recognizable pattern ; and somewhere out of 
the upper end of the heap, gleaming under a 
great deep globular brow, two such eyes as I 
never, perhaps, saw in any other English- 
woman — though I believe she must have had 

' Cf. Payn, " Literary Recollections," 1884. 
229 



The Correspondence of 

French blood in her veins, to breed such 
eyes, and such a tongue, for the beautiful 
speech which came out of that ugly (it was 
that) face ; and the glitter and depth, too, of 
the eyes, like live coals. . . . She was a 
triumph of mind over matter." 

Miss Mitford, ill in body though she was, 
confined to her room, wheeled with difficulty 
from bed to the fireside, unable to stand or 
walk, or when in bed to move or turn, and 
even in writing compelled to have the inkpot 
held for her, was occupied with two pieces 
of literary work. Her faculties were un- 
dimmed. She had undertaken at Mr. 
Bentley's request to write a long tale, and 
she was preparing a collected edition of her 
dramatic works. 

January 6, 1853. 
I was just wondering that I did not hear from 
you, and hoping very sincerely that no illness or 
misfortune of any kind had caused your silence. I 
rejoice to find that it has arisen from other causes, 
and having myself suffered so much from being 
hurried through the press, am tempted to congratu- 
late you upon a slowness which will almost certainly 
be for the good of your book. Thank you very 
much for your kind wishes. Ah ! I want them 

230 



Mary Russell Mitford 

much, for I am in very evil plight. Last Monday- 
fortnight, nearly three weeks ago, I was thrown 
violently out of my little pony-chaise on the hard road 
in Lady Russell's park. No bone was broken, but 
such was the shock to the system, that ten days 
after the accident Mr. May could not satisfy himself 
that there was neither fracture nor dislocation with- 
out a most minute and searching re-examination ; 
and I am at this moment writing to you with my 
left arm bound tightly to my body, and without the 
possibility of raising either foot from the ground. I 
am lifted into bed, lifted out of bed, and have not 
the power of making the slightest change of posture. 
Mr. May says that the case will be long, but that 
he has reason to hope and believe I shall regain my 
former state, such as it was, for if I had not been 
very feeble and very rheumatic, this accident would 
have been much less serious. 

In the midst of all this, K., who has been married 
to Sam for above a twelvemonth, has been confined 
with a little girl. So much for the evil — the good 
is, that the two parts of me thoroughly uninjured 
are the head and the right hand, and that Sam has 
been a real treasure in this affair, lifting me about 
with a tenderness, a handiness, and a power that 
no woman could have, and superintending a giddy 
young maid and a stupid old nurse after a fashion 
that nobody would believe without seeing. Lady 
Russell has walked up every day through the dirt 
and the rain like a real sister. I have seen nobody 

2^1 



The Correspondence of 

but the Russells and Mr. May till to-day, but I 
suppose I must begin to let in one or two friends 
now, so that upon the whole I am mending. 

Now to other things. I think I told you that 
Hawthorne was writing a new romance, but it 
bids fair to be interrupted, for by a packet just 
received from America I find that the new President 
Pierce was his class-fellow at college, and has been 
for the last year or two his neighbour at Concord 
(where Emerson also lives), that they are in com- 
munication every day, and that there is no doubt 
but Hawthorne will be called to high office as soon 
as his friend takes possession of the presidential 
chair. Three years ago he was starving. All my 
correspondents say that no European can even 
imagine the scramble for place and the dirty intrigues 
that take place every four years in the model 
republic. Wise were the French to consolidate 
their government and to choose the really great 
man now at their head, to plan for them large 
measures and wise ameliorations. I rejoice in all 
that he has done, and think the Princess Mathilde a 
great simpleton to desert a man of genius for a mere 
common young prince. For my part, I am not 
sorry that he has lost her. There is madness in her 
father's blood, and health of mind and body is 
above all what he should seek. His own bodily 
health, I hear, is not strong, and he regrets so much 
the garden of the Elysee, that even now the 
Parisians think him likely to return thither. In 

232 



Mary Russell Mitford 

spite of the magnificence which surrounds him, his 
own tastes are as simple as his uncle's. A friend of 
mine who saw his private apartments at St. Cloud, 
just as they had been fitted up under his own 
direction this summer, told me that he never saw 
such an absence of finery or luxury. It was all in the 
severest simplicity and the most perfect taste. He is 
a great man, and pre-eminently manly in every way. 

Of course you have seen our calamities in the 
way of ministers. Henry Drummond (the very 
odd and very clever member for Surrey — you know 
whom I mean) ^ — who is a great friend of Disraeli, 
says that he certainly broke a blood-vessel at the 
besfinning- of the session, and that there was not 
three months' life left in him if he had had to stand 
the worrying of so strong an opposition — so the loss 
of place has saved him. 

I heard yesterday from Miss Goldsmid that the 
Jew Bill is sure to be carried now.^ Many circum- 
stances have helped — the Duke's death, the coalition 
ministry. The prospect has revived her father, who 
was dying of heart complaint. I trust he will live 
to see the measure carried. It has been the labour 
of his life, for he was the real working man of the 
movement. Every citizen has a claim to his civil 
rights, were he Mahomedan or Hindoo. Every- 

' (1786-1860.) M.P. for West Surrey 1847-60 ; he founded 
a professorship for PoUtical Economy at Oxford in 1825. 

^ The Act enabhng Jews to sit in ParUament was not 
passed until 1858. 

-JO 



The Correspondence of 

body seems to hope that this ministry may stay in : 
nothing is so bad as perpetual change, and the 
important question of the colonies will, at all events, 
have the benefit of Sir William Molesworth's advice, 
although it be not his department. 

Within this month I have had several applications 
from Mr. Bentley for a second series of my " Recol- 
lections." I suppose if I recover sufficiently that I 
must try. Should I attempt another series I shall 
devote some chapters to French literature. Do you 
know the delicious ballads of Casimir Delavigne ? 
I have been collecting them for two or three years, 
and was pleased and astonished to see two of them 
quoted in the " Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas." 
You know that the author never seems to have 
guessed at their value, that very few are printed 
among his " Poesies," and that they are scattered 
here and there, set to music, and what not. I wish 
if you meet with any you would send them to me. 
I particularly want one of which the refrain is 
" Chez I'ambassadeur de France," ^ but any will be 

' C£. Delavigne, " Derniers Chants," 1845. A tragic 
" ballade," entitled " La toilette de Constance," in which a 
girl of eighteen, after dressing for a ball where she is to meet 
her lover, is burnt to death through a spark accidentally flying 
on to her thin dress as she stands before the fire admiring 
herself in the mirror above the chimney piece. The " envoi " 
runs : 

Adieu bal, plaisir, amour ! 

On se dit : Pauvre Constance ! 

Et I'on danse jusqu'au jour 

Chez Tambassadeur de France. 

234 



Mary Russell Mitford 

welcome upon the chance of my not having it. 
Tell Madame de Bonstetten how much obliged to 
her I am for her kind recollection. Remember me 
to her and to your sister. Is the Princess happy ? 
Are both those young girls happily married.-* It 
must be an anxiety to those who have been the 
foster-mothers of their minds. And how are your 
young men turning out ? They have quoted my 
article on "Webster" in nearly every paper in the 
United States, and I have heard with great pleasure 
that of the many things written about him, it was 
the one that most gratified his family. Mr. Fields 
sent me an exquisite monody on that great states- 
man, and I really believe it to be his own, worth all 
that has been written on the Duke a million times 
over. The new Duke has never signed his title yet. 
He still writes " Douro." 

Queen Victoria sent my friend Miss Skerrett to 
Germany this autumn to see the Baroness Lehzen. ^ 
She is living in an independent principality in the 
midst of the Kingdom of Hanover. Nobody likes 
"Esmond." 2 The love-story is detestable, and 
besides that, it is long and tedious. I demur, too, 
to the criticism ; holding, with Hazlitt, that Steele 

' Queen Victoria's lirst governess. She was the daughter 
of a Lutheran clergyman of Hanover. At her death in 1870 
the Queen wrote : " She knew me from six months old, and 
from my fifth to my eighteenth year devoted all her care and 
energies to me." (Cf. Sir Sidney Lee, " Queen Victoria," 1904, 
p. 20.) 

= " Esmond" was pubUshed in 1852. 

235 



The Correspondence of 

was worth a thousand Addisons, and Bolingbroke 
by far the finest prose writer of them all. The last 
volume of the " Stones of Venice " will be finished 
in March — finer than the first. 

January 2J, 1853. 
I have to thank you for your most welcome 
letter, and not only for the letter but for the great 
kindness of sendingr me Casimir Delaviane's ballad."' 
I have " La Mort du Bandit," " Le Conclave," 
" L'Ame de Purgatoire," " Le Gondolier," " Neria," 
and the charming one of which the refrain is, " O 
Vierge Marie, pour moi priez Dieu." " Le Chien 
du Louvre " I have not, and shall be most thankful 
for it, so I shall for any others that you may re- 
ceive from your correspondents. The four pieces 
of my collection are in a little volume called 
" CEuvres Completes de Casimir Delavigne — 
Poesies." Dumas underrates him — he was not of 
the romantic school, although his plays are worth 
Dumas' twenty times over, and indeed worth every 
modern French dramatist except Victor Hugo, 
who would have been a splendid tragic writer if 
he had not carried contrast and effect to such an 
excess. Also, can you get me any notice of that 
extraordinary satirist Auguste Barbier?^ I have 
his works. They seem to me quite tremendous in 

' See note, p. 234. 

^ Henri Auguste Barbier (1805-82). His satires entitled 
" lambes," first issued in 1831, have had over thirty editions. 

27,6 



Mary Russell Mitford 

force and savageness, just what I suppose Juvenal 
to have been. Louis Philippe bought him off, I 
believe, and then he attempted other poetry with 
less success. He is just a man to give specimens 
of, if one can find any admissible ; but what is 
become of him ? I should have expected him, if 
he had been still alive, to have come out rampant 
in Ledru Rollin's time, but surely one should have 
heard of him ? at all events he is a prodigious 
" puller down of kings " ; and of everything else. 
Do you know anything of a writer of Chansons — 
Dupont?' "Le drole des droles" my correspondent 
called him, and if it be drole proper tant mieux, 
but if drole improper tant pis. Perhaps the most 
likely is that he is like Beranger, much wrong, and 
some blameless ; in that case I shall get him. 
Some of Alfred de Musset is pretty, I think, but 
I have only one collection, from 1840 to 1849. 
Is there any worth having before or since ? 
And are any of the women good .'* I have 
Mme. Tastu,2 two series, and some of her things 
are I think of considerable merit, especially the 
garden scene in " Romeo and Juliet," which comes 
nearer Shakespeare than I ever thought any 
French translation could do ; also I think Mme. 
E. de Girardin's " Ecole des Journalistes" clever, 

' Pierre Dupont (1821-70), a native of Lyons, was a 
writer of popular songs. 

2 Sabine-Casimir-Amable Voiart (1798-1885) married Joseph 
Tastu (d. 1849) in 1816. She is the author of original poems 
as well as of translations. 

237 



The Correspondence of 

especially with the poignant letter of Jules Janin 
calling her " mon beau confrere " — do you remem- 
ber ? — are any of her other things good ? 

Now to come to my Emperor. How charmed 
I am with this marriage, the finest homage ever 
paid to woman and to love, and how more than 
charmed with the speech in which he announced 
it ; so sudden, so unexpected, so condensed, so full 
of bold and truthful appeal to common human feel- 
ing ! The paragraph where he speaks of Jose- 
phine, where he claims the title of Parvenu, 
where he speaks of his destined wife as " the 
woman whom I love and whom I respect," all 
these go straight to our best sympathies, and there 
has always been his strength and the real proof 
of his genius. There are little passages in the 
three volumes of his published works which have 
the same touch. Mr. Bennoch pointed out to me 
to-day in a letter written from Lord Middleton's fine 
place in Nottinghamshire, that there was almost 
a prophecy of his doings in my " Rienzi," in the 
third act where the citizens are talking of him :— 

First Citizen. Will he dare ? 

Second. Dare ! Why, thou saw'st his spirit. Now his 
power 
Watches his will, and never lineal prince 
Sate firmer on the throne, or lightlier swayed 
The reins of empire. He hath swept away 
The oppressors and extortioners ; hath won 
Kingly allies, hath reconciled the Pope, 
Hath quelled the Barons. 

238 



Mary Russell Mitford 

God grant him a long and happy reign ! Your 
friend, the Countess Stephanie, must enjoy his 
triumph. For my part I look upon this marriage 
as the finest thing he has done. To give to 
mutual affection, to honest preference the place 
hitherto held by a miserable conventional preju- 
dice ; to release kings and princes, not only from 
domestic coldness or domestic misery, but from the 
frightful consequences of these inter-marriages to 
their innocent offspring, from scrofula and epilepsy, 
from madness and idiotism. I earnestly trust that 
the example will be followed. I have the " Homes 
of American Authors," a nice book, and very snugly 
housed they are. I am waiting anxiously for your 
book. 

February i. 

To-day came two more charming lyrics of Casi- 
mir Delavigne. Thank you again and again. 

March 20, 1853. 
I saw the other day a letter from a stiff 
English lady, who had been visiting one of the 
new Empress's ladies of honour, who told her that 
her Majesty shot thirteen brace of partridges one 
morning at St. Cloud, adding — "in spite of that, 
she is so sweet and charming a creature that any 
man might fall in love with her." I like all that 
I hear of her, but nothing better than the way in 
which Mrs. Browning sums up her character, " As 
brave as a lion, and as true as a dog." 

239 



The Correspondence of 

Now let me thank you over and over for Casimir. 
" Le Chien du Louvre " is indeed a chef doeuvre, 
and so is the drinking song. Thank you a thou- 
sand times. Never was anything more against 
me than this weather. Yesterday morning I was 
awakened by a tremendous noise, which proved 
to be men with axes breaking the ice to water 
the horses before ^oingr to Reading^ market. We 
have snow every day, and, in short, Christmas 
weather at Easter. 

Your book has not yet arrived, but I cannot bear 
the ungrateful look of keeping silence longer. Be 
quite sure I will do all I can for it by recommending 
it in all quarters, and I hope to review it in my 
" Second Series." I find that the influence of these 
volumes has been great : — Dr. Holmes has been 
reprinted in consequence, so has Holcroft, and, 
they tell me, two or three other books ; and Whit- 
tier and Hawthorne both say that I have done 
more for their reputation than all the rest of the 
critics put together — and that not only in England 
but in America. Longfellow, I understand, says 
the same. My article on Daniel Webster was 
reprinted in nearly every newspaper in the States, 
and his family sent me word that of all that had 
been written on him it gave them the most plea- 
sure. Mr. Fields tells me that their house at 
Boston sent this Christmas for a thousand copies 
of Bohn's edition of " Our Village," in spite of 
the many editions of all sorts published in America ; 

240 



Mary Russell Mitford 

and I have just corrected my " Recollections " for 
a cheaper edition — the first having been enormous. 
I say all these vain things just to prove that 
I may hope to be of some use to you here- 
after, if I be well enough to bring out a second 
series. 

I have just been looking over a charming little 
work, three ballads by the soi-disant Mary Maynard, 
called the " Heart of Montrose " (do you know that 
strange romantic story in the " Life and Times of 
Montrose " ?) — and a novel not yet printed, by Mrs. 
Acton Tindal, which bids fair to be full of life ; 
also Mr. Justice Talfourd's new tragedy, " The 
Castilian," printed, but not published ; although 
as Moxon's name is in the title-page, and the 
"not published" merely written with a pen, I 
presume he means to bring it out some time or 
other. At present, to quote a very affectionate 
letter which accompanied it, "it is a very 
private sin," having only been given to eight or 
ten people in London, and nobody except my- 
self in Berkshire ; indeed he waited till he got to 
Oxford before he sent it to me. The subject 
is historical — a revolt of the Castilians of Toledo, 
under John de Padilla, in the early part of the 
reign of Charles V. It is very like " Ion," much 
more so than the other tragedies ; but as the char- 
acter is, like his, full of scruples and sentiment, 
it bears little mark of the Castilian of the age 
between Cortes and Alva. Nevertheless it has 

Q 241 



The Correspondence of 

much beauty. Very oddly, old Mariana ^ who gives 
so many traits for the drama, leaves off his history 
just before ; so he has been forced to go to the far 
less picturesque pages of Prescott and Robertson. 
I doubt, though, whether he knows the old Spaniard, 
of whom I have an old folio translation, almost as 
characteristic as Lord Berners' " Froissart." 

Alfred Tennyson has published an amended 
edition of his poem on the Duke's death ; - but 
nothing written on that subject was to be compared 
with a magnificent monody on Daniel Webster, by 
Dr. Parsons,3 an American, who has written very 
little, but whose lines on a Print of Dante are 
said to be the finest thing that any American has 
produced, and that is saying much, 

I heard to-day from Mrs. Browning. She is 
writing a new poem, 4 and her husband is also busy 
with a new work. 5 They are still at Florence, but 
will proceed to Rome and Naples, and arrive here 
in the summer, I suppose by sea. I am sure to like 
your book, and I shall write as soon after receiving 
it as I have an opportunity of sending to the post. 

' Miss Mitford refers to the "iHistoriae de Rebus Hispanias," 
1592, by Juan Mariana (1536-1624). It comes down to the 
accession of Charles V, and the author's Spanish translation 
(1601-9) is a classic. 

= " Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," 1852. 

3 Cf. Thomas William Parsons (1819-92), " Poems," 1854. 
He translated Dante's " Inferno." 

■♦ " Aurora Leigh," published in 1856. 

5 " Men and Women," published in 1855. 

242 



Mary Russell Mitford 

April 22^ 1853. 

I write in post haste, being obliged to send off at 
once to Reading. Owing to one thing or another, 
it is only two days since I received your beautiful 
book.^ The delay however enables me to say that 
the general reception has been most gratifying. 
The " Spectator " (certainly the best and most 
influential of our weekly critical papers) has been 
highly favourable, and so I really believe has been 
the whole press. Three people who were here 
during these two days have said at once that they 
would order it in their book-club, and I have written 
and shall write about it to all quarters where I think 
it likely to do good ; especially to Miss Skerrett to 
mention it to Prince Albert, whom it would certainly 
interest. 

Now, in my opinion, it is a work of the highest 
merit ; one which shows unaffectedly the character 
of the author more than any I almost ever read. 
Full of graphic detail, of novelty, and of interest, 
and exquisitely got up, fit for a drawing-room table 
and fit for a bookcase. 

It must do you immense good in point of reputation. 
The only fault to my apprehension is that it is perhaps 
one fourth part too long. I say this only as a warning 
for the future, for the error (if it be one — perhaps it 
is only my fancy) lies in the original writing, in the 
spinning out dialogue a little too much where there 
^ *' Chamois Hunting in the Mountains of Bavaria." 
243 



The Correspondence of 

is no immediate point of story or character to be 
brought out. Perhaps too this fancy of mine is the 
result of my having just, when I began your book, 
finished Mr. Kingsley's " Hypatia " — also a gift 
book — which is such a whirl of incident and passion. 
But your book is one to be very proud of — one that 
makes me very proud of my friend and for my friend. 
All other sporting books have about them dashes 
of recklessness and vanity. In yours there is an 
evident truth : one trusts every word that you say. 
It would prepare the way for a work on German 
life and manners which I think would have a great 
success. I must write about it to Mr. Fields. I 
should like to see it well reprinted in America. 
I have just been writing to Lord John Russell, 
being thereunto compelled by circumstances. My 
friend, Dr. Holmes, recited at the end of a lecture 
on Byron and Moore, a very sweet poem to the 
memory of the latter, quite like one of Moore's very 
best. Well, he and another friend of mine, Mrs. 
Sparks, wife of Jared Sparks, president of Harvard 
University, sent it to me to transmit to Lord 
John, to be by him transmitted to Mrs. Moore. 
I transcribe one stanza : 

If in his cheek unholy blood 
Burned for one youthful hour, 

'Twas but the flushing of the bud 
That bloomed a milkwhite flower. 

I must write a longer letter another time. I am 
still a prisoner. 

244 



Mary Russell Mitford 

May 31, 1853. 
I am Still a prisoner, so that all I can tell you is 
that every one to whom I have spoken or written 
of your book speaks of it in the highest terms, and 
that what I can hear of the reviews (and I have 
enquired more about that work than I ever did 
about any other) is most gratifying. To me the 
" Chamois Hunting " seems likely to be of great 
use to you permanently. It has the strong indelible 
stamp of a true and pure mind — of thorough gentility 
of thought and of habits — of a strong feeling for the 
picturesque and the beautiful, with a manliness not 
always found with these qualities, and with a 
scholarship kept down by the subject. I would 
leave this book as it is, unless by curtailing certain 
parts a little too much alike you could make room 
for a chapter on deer-stalking. Just read your own 
last fifty pages, which are infinitely more rapid and 
more varied than the rest, and you will see how in 
a future work (for my criticism was altogether pro- 
spective) you would gain by going at a somewhat 
quicker pace over the ground. But I did not mean 
in the slightest degree to find fault with this book, 
certainly the best of its sort I have ever read, but 
only, whilst the impression of a careful perusal was 
strong upon me, to suggest the only change that 
any one could wish in a manner full of good taste. 
Your sister has cause to be much gratified with such 
a book. God grant that the result may be what she 

245 



The Correspondence of 

and I most wish. Even if not immediate I feel that 
the good effect will be certain and permanent. It 
is un fait accompli, and will not fail to bear its fruits^ 
I am sure that your German friends must all like it. 
There is a high-bred simplicity from the first page to 
the last. 

Is it since I wrote to you that I have had to 
transmit to Lord John Russell, for him to forward 
to Mrs. Moore, some lines on her husband's 
memory by Dr. Holmes, so like what Moore would 
himself have written that it is really marvellous ? 
They were sent to me by Mrs. Sparks, and most 
graciously acknowledged by his Lordship. 

Just after that came a packet from Mr. Fields 
containing no less than five presentation copies 
from different American writers (Whittier, Stod- 
dart, etc.), one of them containing by very far the 
finest poem (by Dr. Parsons, also a physician of 
Boston) that has ever crossed the Atlantic. With 
them arrived three more volumes, making ten, 
of De Quincey's racy prose, and two numbers of 
a new magazine just set up in New York, one of 
them most curious for its accounts of the Rappings ; 
about which the New York people seem to have 
gone mad, and another for a most singular history 
of a new claimant to the French crown, or rather 
to the Louis XVII pretendership, who has just 
turned up among the Red Indians. If one did not 
know that whenever there is a demand for believers 
the supply is never wanting, one should wonder 

246 



Mary Russell Mitford 

that some hundreds of thousands (Mrs. Browning 
included) have faith in the rapping imposture, and 
that several episcopal clergymen vouch for the false 
dauphin. 

The book in fashion is a volume of poems by 
Alexander Smith. ^ A number of extracts from 
these poems were sent to me a year and a half ago, 
and this book is just like those extracts printed 
together without any sort of correction — a mass 
of powerful metaphor with scarce any lattice-work 
for the honeysuckles to climb upon — of the worst 
school too, the obscure and the unfinished, but 
he is young and may do better. 

I have at last procured the ballad of which the 
refrain is "Chez I'ambassadeur de France."- I have 
been suffering much, but am again somewhat better. 

I have written about your book to the Palace. 

Miss Mitford to John fames Ruskin.^ 

[1853-] 
Not being sure whether Mr. John Ruskin is 

in England, I write to you, dearest Mr. Ruskin, 
knowing how entirely you are one in heart, and 
how very frequent is your intercourse, to acknow- 
ledge the receipt of his beautiful volume 4- arrived 

' A Scottish poet who published, in 1853, " Life Drama 
and Other Poems," a vohime that made a sensation. 

^ See note, p. 234. 3 Father of John Ruskin. 

4 " Stones of Venice," the third and last volume of which 
was published in 1853. 

247 



The Correspondence of 

this morning. I thank him for it from the bottom 
of my heart. People are a great deal too good to 
me, many people, but none so very good and kind 
in a thousand ways as those who bear the name 
of Ruskin. Of course I have not yet had time to 
read — but this new volume is poetry to the sight — 
never were representations of stones so resolved 
into beauty — so traced up to the leaves and flowers 
which are the loveliest works of God — so made 
to expound and to preach the holiness and virtue 
which art in its perfection ought to teach. Genius 
is a great gift, my dear Mr. Ruskin, a great trust 
— and it would be difficult to find a writer who has 
so worthily exercised his noble powers. One of 
the best symptoms of the age is the recognition 
of the works so high in aim and so perfect in execu- 
tion. It is a privilege to be honoured by the 
friendship of John Ruskin ! . . . 

You will be sorry to hear that the accident of last 
December, I falling as it did upon a subject already 
terribly affected by rheumatism, has left ill effects, 
which threaten to be permanent. For twenty-two 
weeks I was merely wheeled from the bed to the 
fireside, never leaving my room — and although since 
the middle of May I have been lifted from step 
to step downstairs, sometimes into my little pony- 
chaise, sometimes under an acacia-tree at the 
corner of the house, the strength which was ex- 
pected from the air does not come. I can neither 

' See p. 228. 
248 



Mary Russell Mitford 

walk nor stand nor rise from my seat — -cannot get 
out of my little carriage at a friend's house, so great 
are the difficulties — am still lifted into bed and 
cannot turn when there. The medical people say 
that Bath or Brighton might do good — but the hope 
is faint and the fatigfue certain — and fatisfue I can 
so little encounter that the delight of exciting con- 
versation leaves me sleepless and exhausted for 
a week. So that resignation is my wisest course 
— at all events for the present. 

Miss Mitford to Charles Boner. 

July 6, 1853. 
I begin by answering your kind questions about 
my health. The terrible want of power in the 
limbs which rheumatism began, and this bad acci- 
dent has so grievously augmented, does not yield 
in the least to the change of season. They get 
me down step by step to the pony-chaise, and that 
getting down stairs is in itself a most painful, diffi- 
cult, and tedious operation, and then I am driven 
at a foot pace through the lanes. If I attempt 
more I am so sore all over the body that for two 
or three days afterwards it is as if I had been 
pounded in a mortar, and company — the pleasanter 
the worse — has exactly the same effect as a quick 
drive. Nothing does for me but absolute quiet. 
Still Mr. May thinks that the open air may make 
me a little stronger by and bye, and I am looking 

249 



The Correspondence of 

for an old-fashioned garden chair (not a Bath chair) 
in which I may be drawn under a tree during the 
warm afternoons. One bad effect of this weakness 
is that I see few people and write as few letters 
as I can help — for always I am tormented and pur- 
sued by quantities of persons who will write to me, 
persons whom I never saw or heard of, about their 
own books and their own poems. It was only yester- 
day that I received a modest request to edit a novel 
from a person who had no more right to ask me such 
a thing than she could have had to make the same 
request to you. Well, as I was about to say, one 
bad effect of this privacy is that I see few people 
to ask about your book. Young James Payn, a 
splendidly handsome lad of twenty-three, who used 
to be one of my means of hearing that sort of 
news, which gives tidings not merely of books but 
of their success, is gone to the Lakes to finish 
a volume of poems which will be very striking, and 
to try to regain his health, for he has been during 
the winter at death's door, and is exactly the 
charming lad that so often goes off in consumption 
— full of beauty, mental and physical, and with 
a sensibility and grace of mind such as I have 
rarely known. He has been for three years at 
Trinity College, Cambridge, and his opinion about 
sending Alexander Smith to the University is 
exactly mine. It is a place full of dangers. He 
may kill himself as Kirke White ^ and Herbert 

' 1785-1806. He died of over-work at Cambridge. 
250 




Photo'] 



[W. &■ D. Downey. 



JAMES PAYN. 



To face p, 250. 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Knowles ^ did, by trying to overtake those who 
had the advantage of early training and a classical 
ground-work seldom efficiently acquired after 
twenty ; or he may join an idle set, or he may head 
a troop of admirers, blind idolaters, and lose all 
future power in self-admiration — perhaps this last 
destiny would be the most fatal to his talent of all. 
The healthiest thing for him would be a plunge 
into the business and bustle of life. My friend, Mr. 
Bennoch, the cleverest man that I have ever known, 
is at the head of a great commercial house, does 
every day the work of another man's year, will 
be in Parliament whenever he likes, has already 
made a large fortune, and writes here and there 
in railway carriages or anywhere, lyrical poetry that 
has nothing finer in the language, and this at forty- 
two or forty-three. He told me that your book 
had been well received, speaking generally ; so did 
James Payn, so did Mr. Bennett, so did dear Mr. 
Pearson, instancing the " Spectator," a far more in- 
fluential paper than the cold ungenial "Athenccum." 
My own opinion of it is fixed and unalterable. 
It is a little too long for this impatient age, and 
perhaps would have been more immediately popular 
if it had been more dashing and Cumming-like, and 
less true. But I defy any one to read it fairly 
without making acquaintance with a whole set of 
new scenes, new people, and new manners ; and 
this is just the effect that should be produced by 

^ 1798-1817. Also died at Cambridge. 
251 



The Correspondence of 

such a subject, to say nothing of its development 
of the author's personal character. 

I began this as soon as I received yours, but was 
interrupted, and it is now the 26th of June. When 
the weather lets me (for we have a wet, cold, 
showery summer), I sit at the corner of my little 
dwelling, under a superb acacia-tree, laden just now 
with as many showy tassels as leaves. What a 
graceful tree the acacia is ! waving its delicate 
foliage, and bending to every breeze like drooping 
feathers ; just underneath it is a dark syringa, with 
its ivory blossoms — the English orange flower in 
look and in odour. You know, I believe, my love 
of sweet scents (I can even accept perfumes when 
I cannot get flowers), and can imagine how much I 
delight in this mingled fragrance of the syringa and 
the acacia. Almost all the very fragrant flowers 
are white — the violet, the narcissus, the cyclamen, 
the orange, the thousand fruit blossoms, the jessa- 
mine, the hyacinth, the Provence rose, the pink, 
the tuberose, the gardenia, the magnolia — oh, I 
could never be able to count them all. My love of 
fragrant flowers brought me last night a singular 
visitor. 

When putting me to bed K. broke into a variety 
of exclamations, pointing all the while to the candle- 
stick. Looking as she directed, I saw there a dark- 
looking caterpillar. It moved, and there was the 
reflection of a tiny green light. It was a glow- 
worm. On the table were jars of pinks and roses, 

252 



Mary Russell Mitford 

and there had been a jar of wild honeysuckle. 
Doubtless the insect had dropped from the flowers. 
After some consultation we extinguished the candle, 
and Sam deposited the candlestick on the turf in 
front of the house. Ten minutes after, the glow- 
worm had crawled to the grass, I hope to live out 
its little life in peace and comfort. Was it not 
strange ? K., who knows my old love for those 
stars of the earth, says that now I cannot go to 
them they come to me. 

You see the "Athenaeum," I think, and will have 
doubtless been interested by Mr. Collier's curious 
annotated folio copy of Shakespeare, which he ha 
almost traced to the old library at Upton Court. 
I wrote to him about a week ago to tell him that 
my friend Miss Ellen Cowslede, whose aunt, Mrs. 
Selwin (Christopher Smart's daughter), was so 
much with the old priest who lingered in the 
deserted mansion after everybody else had aban- 
doned it, was the most likely person to tell him 
of the fate of the book. In his answer, which was 
most gracious, he told me that he had just lost 
one daughter by consumption, and another was 
given over with the same complaint. I think that 
terrible disease is prevailing more than ever. I 
heard the other day from Lady Richardson, wife 
of the Arctic traveller, ^ and daughter of Mrs. 
Fletcher, Wordsworth's friend. Did you see her 
when at Rydal ? I do not know her. Also the 
* Sir John Richardson (1787-1865). 
253 



The Correspondence of 

Baroness Sternberg, who has a fine place on 
Windermere, writes to me and I heard the other 
day of Harriet Martineau — all neighbours. 

July 24, 1853. 
Thank you again and again for the deep interest 
you show in my health, and all the trouble you 
take to further my amendment. This year a journey 
to Wildbad is quite out of the question. If we had 
but a little dry weather, perhaps I might grow 
stronger ; for it is total want of power that is my 
worst symptom, or, rather, my worst disease. They 
say that air is the best tonic for my case, and I 
get out when I can, but we have hardly had a 
dry day this summer, as the hay can tell. I have 
only once smelt that delicious odour of new hay, 
in spite of all the waggons that pass our house, and 
all the meadows through which we drive when we 
can get out. But there must be some change, and 
it can hardly fail of being for the better. What 
is likely to fix me here is this : my friend, Mr. 
Bennoch, has set his very heart and soul on my 
publishing a collected edition of my dramatic works 
— the plays and the dramatic scenes. Now three 
of these tragedies, never acted, had been sent to 
Colburn to be printed with some prose stories, 
originally in Finden's Tableaux some years ago. 
Any day they might have been done, but I put it off, 
and now Colburn has retired from business. So I 
wrote a very humble letter, knowing that it was 

254 



Mary Russell Mitford 

my fault, and asking if they had still the manu- 
scripts, and would send them to Mr. Bennoch. 
The next day Colburn called, and told Mr. Bennoch 
that he had reserved an interest in two or three 
works, this especially, and then Mr. Bennoch pro- 
posed that they should publish the two works 
separately — the dramatic works first in the long 
days — then the other (of which there will be a 
volume to be written) in the long evenings. All 
is not quite settled, because Mr. Hurst (Colburn's 
successor) is out of town, but I suppose it will be 
so, and I must try for strength to do my part, 
I always expected the tragedies to be published 
after my death, and it seems like an anachronism 
to bring them out before. 

July 28, 1853. 
I have been reading with absorbing interest 
Haydon's life. It is a most painful and most 
fascinating book, and people who knew far less 
of him than I, seem to feel it equally. It makes 
Moore's life, always frivolous, seem rags and tinsel 
in the comparison. Mr. Taylor has done his work 
admirably, as concerns the living, and as giving a 
most characteristic picture of the dead. But con- 
sidering that there were twenty-nine folio volumes 
of journals, closely written, ledger-like books, and 
that one of the three published octavos is filled 
with autobiography distinct from them, it seems 
to me he might have omitted the prayers and the 

25s 



The Correspondence of 

bitter spite against the sitters. He of course wished 
to give a complete portrait, and he has done so.^ 
The man always reminded me of Benvenuto Cellini, 
and the book has the same character. I had for- 
gotten the sonnet of mine which is included, and 
thought, till I saw it, that it was the earlier one 
inserted in the Dramatic Scenes. 

Did I tell you that on the Thursday before his 
death, sending some things to be taken care of by 
Miss Barrett, he sent my portrait (a head cut out 
of a great picture larger than life, over-coloured but 
strangely like) as a present ; then called and said he 
would only leave it as a loan — on Tuesday he killed 
himself. There is no mention of that episode of 
my portrait in the book (I dare say Mr. Taylor did 
not know it), and I cannot tell what has become 
of it.2 

I have been seeing a great deal of the Kingsleys 
lately. Charming people ! He is not the least Alton 
Lockeish, but a frank, cordial, high-bred gentleman, 
and she just fit for a poet's wife. Do you know 
him ? He says that he certainly either knows 
personally or has heard much of a Charles Boner, 
a very handsome dark man — living amongst German 

^ In a letter to A. H. Clough (November 22, 1853) Charles 
Eliot Norton writes, apropos of Taylor's book : '* What a 
mistake the English are making in taking Haydon so much 
at his own estimate and blaming themselves (with a self- 
accusation which has a tone of self-laudation in it) for not 
better appreciating ' high art.'" 

» See p. 53. 

256 



Mary Russell Mitford 

princes — a great scholar in many ways, and he 
thought author of " Chamois Hunting," etc. But 
then, that Charles Boner was originally of Edin- 
burgh, and had three sisters, great beauties, very 
dashing, and one of them married to some cele- 
brated man. I told him that my friend, to whom 
the first part of the description applied exactly, 
was born at Bath, and educated for the most part 
in Devonshire, and that I had only heard of one 
excellent sister, whom I believed to be single. I 
mystified him exceedingly. I let him see what 
you say of the German poets, and then we talked 
of Poe. 

If you know Charles Kingsley you are not likely 
to forget him, for he is a man after your own heart ; 
who would go chamois hunting himself if he could, 
as manly a creature as ever lived, and as gentle 
and courteous as manly men commonly are. He 
is seven or eight miles off unluckily, but does not 
mind it to come here, which is a great comfort 
to me. 

Alfred Tennyson was with him lately, much 
softened and improved by the birth of his child. 
They are looking for a house near her friends, but 
would come here, Mr. Kingsley thinks, if we could 
find him a habitation. I should like that much. 
We are expecting Hawthorne every day. He sent 
me word the day after his landing at Liverpool, and 
he and his friend Mr. Ticknor (the great publisher 
of Boston, partner of my friend Mr. Fields) are only 

R 257 



The Correspondence of 

waiting dear Mr. Bennoch's leisure to come here 
with him and his wife. Mr. Ticknor's coming this 
year keeps dear Mr. Fields in America, but it is 
only fair that the other should come, and next year, 
if I be spared, we shall see that beloved friend. I 
wonder whether Hawthorne will talk or no ! They 
say that for the most part he is perfectly silent, 
grave, shy, almost morose, with brilliant but very 
rare half-hours. Well ! if anybody can bring him 
out it will be Mr. Bennoch and Mr. Kingsley. 
They are frankness itself What a nice letter was 
the Prince of Leiningen's ! Our Queen's half- 
brother, is he not ? and how entirely you have 
earned the pleasure you will enjoy. It must be 
very gratifying to find your work so appreciated by 
those who know best. 



September 19, 1853. 

This will be a very shabby letter, because until I 
shall have completed my story, probably not till 
next May or June, I can write none but the shortest 
of notes ; indeed, unless to distant friends, I have 
oriven notice that I cannot write at all. You must 
understand that I have a long tale, almost a novel, ^ 
to write, and that the Plays and Dramatic Scenes 
will occupy two very thick volumes. All that I 
have yet done is to correct the proofs of perhaps half 
a volume, and finish the writing of the preface — 

I " Atherton and Other Tales," published early in 1854. 

258 



Mary Russell Mitford 

fifty pages of letter-press probably, and more com- 
pletely an autobiography than all the "Recollec- 
tions " put together. If it please God to spare my 
life and intellects, I shall certainly give another 
series of " Recollections " when these two works are 
completed. Mr. Bentley counts upon it, and I get 
letters about it every day. The selections are so 
wanted for forming the taste of young persons, 
and there will, of course, be a mixture of other 
papers. 

I hope that long before this reaches you your 
attack of rheumatism will have vanished. Are you 
doing too much in the way of exercise ? I am con- 
vinced that I did, and even strength and youth will 
not stand against over-exertion. My own state is 
just as when last I described it to you — lifted up 
and down stairs and borne along upon level ground, 
and what is worst of all, unable to turn in bed when 
lifted there. I earnestly hope that you are before 
this time quite recovered, and that you have been 
able to enjoy the sport you love so well, with your 
princely host.^ What you tell me of your plan 
for a series of pictures of past German life is 
excellent. I think no work would be more likely 
to succeed. You must make it as rapid and vivid 
as possible. 

" Bracebridge Hall " was a little unreal and a 
little long. Being himself a copy, Washington 
Irving is a bad model. The most amusing books 

' Boner was on a visit to Prince Leiningen. 
259 



The Correspondence of 

of that sort have been real. " The Memoirs of the 
Margravine of Bayreuth," and Thiebault's gives a 
capital account of Frederick the Great and his 
Court. Have you met with Sainte-Beuve's 
"Causeries du Lundi," the Monday feuilletons of 
the " Constitutionelle," now by the admirable taste 
of my Emperor transferred to the " Moniteur " .'' 
I recommended them as a model to Mr. Willmott, 
the principal critic of the "Times," and he is cer- 
tainly following my advice ; as, if you see the 
"Times," you will perceive. Nothing can be 
better than his late articles, rich, varied, and ele- 
gant, as fit for a series of volumes as for a news- 
paper. Do pursue your notion of old German life. 
It will be amusing, and you will have no rival in 
English literature. 

I will be sure to tell Mr. Kingsley what you 
say. It cannot but please him. It is very odd 
that young James Payn, who arrived to-day about 
two hours after your letter, brought me a very fine 
print of him. These coincidences are commoner 
than they seem. James Payn's new volume will be 
very fine ; he has been to Scotland and the lakes 
this year, where Harriet Martineau talked over the 
book with him, exculpating Mrs. Atkinson ; and 
the glorious old Mr. De Quincey confessed that 
he was miserable from nerves and compelled to 
have recourse to a partial inebriation from opium. 
He (De Quincey) talks of coming to this neigh- 
bourhood, which seems almost too good to hope 

260 



Mary Russell Mitford 

for, his conversation being the finest of the 
world. 

Accidentally I have just seen a capital review of 
"Chamois Hunting" in " Bell's Weekly Messenger" 
for April 28th. It was a fragment in which some 
books were folded, and which Sam ^ brought to me, 
knowing the interest I took in your success. It 
was very nice in him, was it not? He is a great 
reader himself, especially of newspapers. 

Since beginning this letter I have been applied 
to for Haydon's letters, and had to look over five 
great boxes, trunks, and chests, two huge hampers, 
baskets innumerable, and drawers without count. 
I discovered sixty-five, mostly very long. I have 
no doubt but I have still many more, but being 
almost blinded by the search, shall not trouble my- 
self farther. That correspondence (if he wrote to 

^ Samuel Swetman, Miss Mitford's servant. In a letter to 
Ruskin (December 24, 1854) she gives the following account 
of him : 

" His father was kennel-man to Sir John Cope's hounds — a 
menial servant — at whose death the good old Baronet sent 
his whole estabhshment four miles to attend the funeral, 
putting on mourning himself for the day — and whose seven 
children, one daughter and six sons, have all turned out 
equally respectable. That homely name is a warrant for 
good character and good conduct, in a station a httle above 
the father's — head groom for instance in a nobleman's family, 
or head coachman, or upper Whip at twenty-four who will 
be Huntsman. I am proud of Sam's pedigree. He came 
to me for three weeks to drive my pony-chaise — and partly 
from liking for me and partly from love of K., [her name 
was Kerenhappuch] has staid seven years." 

261 



Mary Russell Mitford 

many people as he did to me) will be a most inter- 
esting work. My contribution will, I should think, 
make a long volume. Have you seen the " Life " ? 
It had an immense success here ; the greatest of 
the year. 



262 



1854 



January 30, 1854. 

First let me very sincerely and heartily wish you 
all the health, and happiness, and prosperity, which 
can be hoped for in this world, and many years in 
which to enjoy those blessings. 

You are so good as to desire to hear from me, 
but my letters are necessarily bulletins of my own 
most wretched health. I have now been two 
months shut up in my own room, get with exceed- 
ing difficulty from the bed to the fireside, unable to 
stir either in bed or in my chair, but much more 
comfortable in the chair than in bed ; and here I 
must remain, I suppose, till May, when, if there be 
anything like summer weather, I may be lifted 
downstairs and into the pony-chaise. 

Of course I see nobody, and have done all I can 
to discourage people from writing to me — writing 
being most painful to me, as well as most trouble- 
some, from rheumatic pains in the chest, so that I 
have very little news of any sort. The charming 
Margaret De Quincey (eldest daughter of the opium 
eater) has married a Scotch neighbour of the name 

263 



The Correspondence of 

of Craig, who has bought lands in Ireland, and is 
going to live in Tipperary. Henry Hope (eldest 
son of Thomas Hope) has bought a great estate 
there — Castle Blayney. They will not desert the 
Deepdene, of course, but ^80,000 a year, kindly 
spent, must do good to Irish peasants. 

You see the " Times." — Did you read the admir- 
able evidence on the London Corporation by my 
friend Francis Bennoch ^ Nothing out of Parlia- 
ment ever made so great a sensation. He has been 
to Paris since, and says that not only in beauty but 
in perfect drainage, supply of water and work- 
people's habitations, Louis Napoleon has done in 
two years all that we have been talking about and 
have not done in twenty. Tell me anything you 
hear of this great man. Dr. Arnold's son (Matthew 
Arnold) has published another volume of poems, ^ 
which has shown considerable ability. Young 
poets swarm just now. I have a dear young friend 
who has just left Trinity College, Cambridge, and 
will be nothing else ; a thousand pities, for he is a 
younger son and a charming young man, and to 
make the matter still worse he is sfoinp" to be 
married. Have you seen Dr. Doran's book ."^ It 
is amusing enough, but too long. 

I rejoice at what you told me of your book. 
One of the pleasantest sporting writers — Mr. St. 
John — is lately dead, so is his half-brother. Both 

' " Poems " (containing " Sohrab and Rustuni," "Scholar- 
Gipsy," etc.), 1853. 

264 



Mary Russell Mitford 

were sons of the Honourable General St. John, 
whose widow is an old friend of mine. Her son 
(not the author) killed himself by his own folly. 
Last year all the young men at Brighton used to 
walk on the cliff, smoking cigars, after leaving the 
ballroom at four o'clock in the morning. This 
young man, with the seeds of consumption in him, 
died, of course. 

Think of your book on old German customs. It 
will be curious, and get it as close as you can, lively 
and full. A little tendency to length is your 
danger. But you may be sure that the " Chamois 
Hunting " has made a most favourable impression, 
especially on those whose good opinion you would 
most desire. 

March 7, 1854. 
I thank you heartily for your affectionate sym- 
pathy, and although I write with exceeding pain and 
difficulty (for except the daily growing weaker there 
is little change in my condition), I yet write to say 
that Mr. Fields is expected in England this spring, 
and that if you will write me such a letter as you 
would like him to see, it shall — if I be still alive — be 
put in his hands, together with " Chamois Hunt- 
ing," and whatever I can say by way of good 
opinion of the writer. K.'s little boy is not to go to 
America till he is fourteen, and the house is not at 
New York but at Boston — Messrs. Ticknor, Reid 
and Fields, one of the greatest houses in the 

265 



The Correspondence of 

world. 'f I also know Mr. Ticknor — an admirable 
man. You can write to him if you like, only 
Mr. Fields is coming. I thought you ought to 
know this. 

Of course my books have been reprinted over 
and over again in America. Even a superb col- 
lected edition with four of the tragedies, in 
Philadelphia. 

Yes, 7ity Emperor is indeed a man to be proud of. 
Tell me anything you hear of him, or of his sweet 
wife. I suppose the Countess Tascher de la 
Pagerie is now in Paris. Those papers are admir- 
able. It is delightful to see the solemn coxcomb 
Guizot, and the little scamp Thiers, so completely 
put aside, and the governments and courts who 
held to one another's rottenness forced to come 
round. Can anybody depend on Austria and 
Prussia, especially the latter? 

March 24, 1854. 

I write only one line to tell you that Mr. Fields 
is expected here in May. I don't know at what 
time in the month. He will be to be heard of at 
Francis Bennoch's, Esq., "]"], Wood Street, Cheap- 
side ; the time to find Mr. Bennoch there being 
from one to two o'clock at luncheon. He lives at 
Blackheath Park. I tell you this lest your poor old 
friend should be gone before May. Mr. Bennoch 

^ See p. 217. 

266 



Mary Russell Mitford 

is expected here soon, and I shall do all I can to 
interest him in the cause, and put into his hands 
the " Chamois Hunting," and your two last 
letters. 

Thank you for your admirable character of 
the Emperor and the King of Prussia. You are 
right as to our national ignorance of our nearest 
neighbours. But this ministry — especially Lord 
Aberdeen — seems to be quite imbecile. There 
is no hope but in the French and the English 
people. 

I have had a great shock in the death of poor 
Judge Talfourd.^ He had spent two hours at 
my bedside about a fortnight before, and being 
much affected at the state in which he saw me, 
all the old friendship came back upon us both, 
as in the many years when my father's house was 
a second home to him. We both, I believe, felt 
it to be a last parting, though neither dreamed 
which thread of the cord would be so soon 
parted. 

You cannot doubt how glad I should be to see 
you once again, though I am only equal to seeing 
any one from one to two hours a day. 

Correcting the proofs of " Atherton " has almost 
killed me. The other stories (reprinted from 
annuals) I have not attempted to look at. I 
suppose both "Atherton" and the "Dramatic 
Works " will soon be out. 

' Died March 13, 1854. 
267 



The Correspondence of 

Ruskin read, liked, and highly praised 
"Atherton." Writing to her he said: '* I 
have just finished 'Atherton,' to my great 
regret, thinking it one of the sweetest things 
you have ever written, and receiving from it 
the same kind of refreshment which I do 
from lying on the grass in spring." It 
was warmly received by the public. Miss 
Mitford had taken great pains with it, 
writing each page three times over. 

Miss Mitford to John Ruskin. 

April II, 1854. 

Ah, my dear Mr. John Ruskin, you never would 
dream of accusing yourself as you do if you knew 
all I think of you. Next to your dear father 1 
think you are kinder to me than anybody in the 
world, and I owe his goodness to you. I cannot 
talk of either without the tears coming into my 
eyes. Your liking " Atherton " will be the highest 
gratification to me. The printers failed just after 
they began — nearly a month was lost in finding 
another, and at last it was driven through the press 
at the rate of 100 pages a day — nearly killing me 
and causing errata out of number — for the proofs 
came to me without ever having been read over at 
the office. 

268 



Mary Russell Mitford 



Miss Mitford to Charles Boner. 

May 24, 1854. 

It is so difficult to contrive to send Sam into 
Reading, I myself wanting him so constantly, that 
I send this unpaid by our village post. I hope 
it will reach you. I am much as before, a little 
better perhaps of the pain under the arms and over 
the heart, but no stronger, and still confined as 
before to one motionless position in bed, and 
another when lifted out into my arm-chair. I shall, 
however, rejoice to see you. You must not come 
even to the house before three or four o'clock. It 
oversets me for many days to do so. Indeed very 
few persons are admitted at all Let me know 
when you come. Of course K. will get you dinner. 
If you like children you will be charmed with our 
little girl. 

" Atherton " is a most extraordinary success. It 
was met by the whole press with enthusiasm, the 
"Athenaeum" being the only cold notice, as it is 
the only one of which I know the writer ; and not 
only did it go in five weeks into a second edition, 
but the fashion for it is such that Mr. Mudie 
told my publisher, Mr. Hurst, last week he had 
four hundred copies in circulation, and could not do 
with less. I requested my friend, Mr. Bennoch, 
to keep a copy for you. He read two of your 
letters, and was much struck with them, and desired 

269 



The Correspondence of 

me to say that he would gladly take your message 
for Mr. Fields, in case of your not coming to 
England. Mr. Fields was to have arrived at 
Liverpool on Friday last, but has deferred his 
voyage for a month, so you will meet. In the 
meantime, pray call at Mr. Bennoch's house of 
business. You will find him a very remarkable 
man in every way, and full of kindness. I hope 
you will get this letter, but that Reading post 
office is wretched. 

Charles Boner paid Miss Mitford a visit 
in June — indeed, he came to England a 
year before he intended in order to see 
her once again. The excitement and the 
exertion of talking with him brought on 
such exhaustion and so terrible a struggle 
for breath that her servants thought Miss 
Mitford was dying. But she made a 
wonderful rally, and her interest in books 
and in her fellow-creatures was keen to 
the end. 

Thursday Night, 

[June, 1854]. 

You will be sorry, I know, but not angry with 
me for writing this letter. It is indeed necessary 
that it should be written, painful as it is to us both. 
I was so glad to see you, and so excited by your 

270 



Mary Russell Mitford 

conversation that the fatigue and the exhaustion 
were in proportion to the excitement, and on being 
lifted into bed the gasping for breath which now 
attends every exertion, became such a struggle that 
both K. and Sam thought me dying. This was 
followed by sickness and low fever, I am still 
suffering from the exertion, and must not risk a 
repetition. I have just written to the oldest friend 
in the world, requesting him not to come here, and 
I must make the same request of you. Let me 
know how you speed with royalty, and with that 
other royalty the booksellers, and all that interests 
you, for be very sure that I shall not lose my strong 
interest in you while consciousness remains. I take 
for granted you are not at Oxford. I write to Mr. 
Bennoch to ask him to procure for you a copy of 
" Atherton." 

Be very sure that I have never for one moment 
ceased to recognize that the fault of your staying 
a little too long with me was exclusively mine. 
You were most considerate. Perhaps, however, 
the real fault lay in the great pleasure that your 
coming gave me, which is a delinquency that we 
neither of us wish less, for certainly there are very 
few whom I more sincerely love, esteem, and 
respect, or whose future destiny interests me more. 
I hope and believe that it will be bright and 
peaceful, such as a youth of virtuous activity has 
earned. 

271 



The Correspondence of 

To-day brought me a most interesting letter from 
Mr. Kingsley. His sweet wife, the only realization 
of my idea of a poet's wife that I have ever seen, 
has had a dangerous relapse. She is now better, 
and her excellent husband is about to move her to 
a pretty place that he has taken in the north of 
Devon. ^ He does not come to Eversley till 
August, when, if I still be spared, I shall see him. 
My breath has been a little relieved by strengthen- 
ing and stimulating medicine, as much champagne 
and nourishment as K. can coax down, and the 
most absolute quiet. Even Lady Russell only 
stays five minutes. 

I have not heard one word of Mr. Fields. It is 
really most singular. This silence has lasted three 
months, and the last letter I received was dated 
February, and had evidently been long tossed 
about. I know you will let me know all that 
interests you, especially if the rifle improvement 
carry you to St. Cloud. 

Thursday, June 27, 1854. 

After becoming still more exhausted, so that on 
Saturday Mr. May was so far alarmed as to write 
himself to Mr. Harness not to come, but to keep 
away, I am for the moment a little revived by 
champagne and highly stimulating medicine, and 
perhaps still more by a quietness all about me, 

^ Near Bideford. 
272 



Mary Russell Mitford 

which to one so excitable is the most needful of all. 
I am so sorry to know that you are in England 
and yet not to have the pleasure of another inter- 
view, but it would be grief to you, whose kindness I 
so well know, to shake the last sands in the hour 
glass. I wait anxiously for to-morrow's letter, but 
I send this to-day to say that if Mr. Fields should 
arrive before your departure, and if I (as is very 
likely) should be too ill to suffer him to come, I 
am quite sure that you might depend on my good 
friend Mr. Bennett to transmit any message you 
might wish. He is a person of the most perfect 
good faith. Remember that I gave into Mr. 
Bennoch's hands the copy of the "Chamois Hunt- 
ing" which you gave me to be transmitted to 
Mr. Fields. Because the remainder of these letters 
was cheerful as usual, you none of you realized the 
idea of so total a failure of strength and power. 
He was to have come to see me with Mr. Fields, 
and if I am obliged to put off the latter I should 
earnestly desire him to know that my latest feelings 
towards himself were those of affection and of 
gratitude for many kindnesses. Of Mr. Fields I 
have heard nothing these three months, nor indeed 
of Mr. Bennoch except by an Oxford paper, which 
I wonder at his sending. How could he expect 
you to join such a party! Poor Lockhart. It is 

just what I heard of him at . A friend of 

mine who is intimate with Croker, wrote to me the 
other day that he had been to see him. His pulse 
s 273 



The Correspondence of 

in the morning had been twenty-four! But his 
faculties were as keen as ever. 

J^uly 5, 1854. 

With your kind and interesting letter to-day 
came one of remarkable beauty from Mr. Tom 
Taylor, to whom I had written about my letters 
to Haydon. The plan of publishing them is given 
up — I mean the correspondence altogether. Sir 
Charles Eastlake would not give Haydon's letters 
to him. No wonder ! The Life had shown his 
base ingratitude already, and there was a great fear 
then that those of Wilkie would also be withheld 
by Azs representatives. I am glad of this, and 
very glad of Mr. Taylor's letter. 

I shall be most anxious to hear more of your 
rifle invention. No doubt you are a better judge 
in such matters than many men in the army. 
I remember how instant and true some of the 
shots were in your charming book — it cannot but 
add to your reputation in every way. The 
Emperor Louis Napoleon would be capable of 
appreciating such an improvement. I have only 
read the preface to his " History of Artillery," but 
that is charming. I have letters to-day from Mr. 
Bennett and Mr. Bennoch, both full of your praise. 

In the autumn of 1854 Walter Savage 
Landor sent Miss Mitford the following 

poem : 

274 



Mary Russell Mitford 

The hay is carried ; and the Hours 
Snatch, as they pass, the Hnden flowers ; 
And children leap to pluck a spray 
Bent earthward, and then run away. 
Park-keeper, catch me those grave thieves, 
About whose frocks the fragrant leaves 
Sticking and fluttering, here and there, 
No false nor faltering witness bear. 

I never view such scenes as these 
In grassy meadow, girt with trees. 
But comes a thought of her who now 
Sits with serenely patient brow 
Amid deep sufferings. None hath told 
More pleasant tales to young and old. 
Fondest was she of Father Thames, 
But rambled in Hellenic streams ; 
Nor even there could any tell 
The country's purer charms so well 
As Mary Mitford. 

Verse ! go forth 
And breathe o'er gentle breasts her worth. 
Needless the task . . . but, should she see 
One hearty wish from you and me, 
A moment's pain it may assuage — 
A rose-leaf on the couch of Age. 

The verses naturally gave Miss Mitford 

very great pleasure. She tells Boner that 

275 



The Correspondence of 

the American poet, Parsons, also "addressed " 
a poem to her. It is not printed in the 
collected volume of his poems, but he in- 
scribed to Miss Mitford his " Proem to 
Manzoni's * Cinque Maggio,' " the ode on 
the death of Napoleon, and it may be 
this to which Miss Mitford refers. 

July 20, 1854. 

Your most interesting letter is just arrived. 
Thank you for it. 1 rejoice that you have seen 
Paris. To me this Napoleon is even a greater man 
than his uncle. He has not the terrible deduction 
of the coarser and vulgarer fame belonging to the 
soldier and the conqueror, and has done what was 
so difficult, won a second great name in spite of 
the tremendous rivalry of his predecessor's renown. 
Moreover, happier than the first Napoleon, he 
learnt in adversity to command himself. I wish 
you had seen the Taschers and him. 

Mr. Bennoch has undertaken to send you my 
dramatic works. I hope you will like them. I 
don't know how many of my plays you have read. 
At present the taste for the drama is extinct in 
England, but some day or other it may revive, and 
then it will be a good thing to have gathered 
these tragedies together. Perhaps you have 
already got them. If so, write on the chance of 
my being still spared to say how you like them. 

276 



Mary Russell Mitford 

"Otto" and " Max," which have never been acted, 
seem to me to be quite as good as " Rienzi," 
which went one hundred nights. With these 
volumes he undertook to send two proofs on India 
paper, one of the engraving from John Lucas's 
picture, the other of a miniature taken when I was 
a child. 

Mr. Fields was so seized by sea-sickness that 
he stopped at Halifax and put back to Boston, 
so neither he nor the Browninsfs come to England 
this year. I wrote him a long letter about the 
" Chamois Shooting." I hope Mr. Bennoch will 
send him my copy which I gave him for that 
purpose, but you had better write too, for the 
Bennochs are going their annual tour this year to 
the Shetland Isles. Two of my other friends want 
Mr. Fields to be their publisher — Mr. Willmott and 
the Brownings. So you will be in good company. 
I told him as I believe that your book would be 
equally creditable and profitable. One of the few 
friends whom I admit spoke of it to me the other 
day as a work which she had recommended far 
and wide. She is a sister of Sir W. P. Wood,^ 
the new Vice-Chancellor. Mr. Fields says that the 
success of "Atherton" in America is immense. 
He says : " The newspapers and periodicals are 
all outvieing each other in words of praise. No 
book for many years has been received with such 
an outburst of applause." 

'' William Page Wood (Baron Hatherley), 1801-81. 
277 



The Correspondence of 

Old Mr. Landor sent me yesterday the most 
beautiful verses, I think, that he has written. I 
dare say he will print them. I am told too that 
Dr. Parsons (author of the matchless lines on 
Dante) has addressed an exquisite poem to me. 
I have not seen it. We have had three days of 
intolerable heat which have tried me much. 

Authors are often poor judges of their own 
particular talents, and Miss Mitford, for 
whom the stage held great fascination, con- 
sidered that her chief talent lay in tragedy. 
The publication of her dramatic works in two 
volumes this year led her to write about her 
early dramatic career to her correspondents. 
Her memory sometimes plays her false, and 
she certainly puts her dramatic reputation far 
higher than it actually was. 

Miss Mitford to John Ruskin. 

August 2, 1854. 
The sight of your writing does me good. I even 
think that when your letters and those of your dear 
father come I have a bright hour. — I am now 
sitting at the open window inhaling the sweet 
summer air — a jar of roses inside the window-sill — 
a perfect sheaf of fresh gathered meadow-sweet 
sending its almondy fragrance from without — and 

278 




.K)H.\ RU^KIX, 1854. 

From Ihe painting by Sir J. E. Millais in the possession of Admiial Sir William Dyke Acland. 

(By kind peijiiission of the oivner and Messrs. George Allen &■ Co., Lid.) 



To face p. 278. 



Mary Russell Mitford 

although too deeply sunken in my chair to look 
down on the flower beds in my little court yet with 
the blue sky and the green trees, and a bit of road 
and the distant harvest-fields for a prospect. God 
is very merciful to give me thus to the last the 
enjoyment of His works — and such a friend with 
whom to talk (for we are talking) of that enjoy- 
ment. How good you are to me in every way ! I 
have such a delight in the drama that I have not for 
a long while looked forward to any book '^ with so 
much pleasure as that which you promise me. 

And yet the drama is a strange transitory thing 
— transitory even in the reputation that it brings — 
a reputation which can be effaced as a child wipes 
its writing^ from a slate — substitutingr another word 
— perhaps to last little longer. Thirty years ago, 
after many volumes of ** Our Village " had been 
published, I was far better known as a dramatist 
than as a prose writer. All the four Tragedies that 
have been acted had a real success — three of them 
far beyond the average — and " Rienzi " greater than 
perhaps any tragic play (except " Virginius " and 
" William Tell ") of the present century. It was 
performed above a hundred nights at Drury Lane 
Theatre- during the two years that Mr. Young 

' Octave Feuillet's " Scenes et Proverbes." 

2 Produced October 9, 1828, with Young as the hero, and 
acted thirty-four times. Stanfield painted the scenery. Miss 
Mitford received ;^40o from the theatre, and eight thousand 
copies of the printed book were sold. 

279 



The Correspondence of 

remained upon the stage — and went through more 
editions than I venture to enumerate (I think there 
were at least ten or twelve during which the little 
wretched dab of a book was sold at 3s. 6d.). My 
only reason for leaving a mode of composition I 
loved so well was the necessity of earning a fixed 
and certain income — and the terrible uncertainty 
between managers, actors and licensers of all 
earnings on the stage. For the rest my plays were 
and are essentially dramatic — plays to act and not 
to read — and I am glad to have gathered them 
together and put them into a correct form, to give 
them a chance (if ever there be again an English 
stage) of being produced there. The two that 
have not been acted, " Inez de Castro" and "Otto 
of Wittelsbach," may possibly tempt the one a 
great actress the other a great actor. I do hope 
that you and dear Mr. Ruskin ^ may like them. 
Two copies have been sent for you to Denmark 
Hill. 

Forgfive this egfotism. " Since the three or four 
hot days and a thunderstorm " which Horace 
Walpole says constitute an English summer and 
which nearly killed me, I am somewhat revived — 
that is I am kept up by nourishment every two or 
three hours — beef-tea, blancmange, sole, whiting, 
champagne and water (at the rate of a tablespoonful 
to a dose) as often as they can pour it down my 
throat. 

' Ruskin's father. 
280 



Mary Russell Mitford 



Miss Mitford to Charles Boner. 

September 5, 1854. 
I am delighted at your liking the engraving (a 
very bad one) from Mr. Lucas's fine picture. The 
other was a miniature of me at three years old, and 
is certainly a most attractive and nicely executed 
little portrait. I am so glad you have them. But you 
will find the true portrait of my mind in the Tragedies 
and the Dramatic Scenes. I have not in the 
preface told any part of the real story of these plays. 
The fact was that, by the terrible uncertainty of the 
acted drama, and other circumstances, I was driven 
to a trade when I longed to devote myself to an art. 
Read those plays attentively and study their con- 
struction, and you will, I think, see that that was my 
vocation. Indeed the success of " Rienzi" ^ was some- 
thing unprecedented upon the, at that time, modern 
stage ; and in " Foscari "- (much better acted) ladies 
used to be carried out fainting and in hysterics. At 
all events I have now rescued these plays from the 
misprints of Cumberland (who preferred to copy 
the blunders of the actors instead of the words of 

' See p. 279. 

= Produced at Covent Garden, November 4, 1826, with 
Charles Kemble as the hero, and acted fifteen times. Miss 
Mitford declared that her play was written and presented to 
Covent Garden before the publication of Byron's drama 
"The Two Foscari" (1821). 

281 



The Correspondence of 

the author), and the new plays from the dangers of 
MS. Everybody says that the two new tragedies, 
" Inez de Castro" and " Otto of Wittelsbach," are 
amongst the best, the latter perhaps the very best ; 
and, come a great actor or a great actress, you will 
see them acted. The preface was written this time 
last year. I do not think that people have a right to 
give pain, and therefore I have abstained from 
stating any particulars that must have done so. 
Tell me when you have read these plays how you 
like them. I may be gone when your letter arrives, 
but there is a chance of my still surviving ; perhaps 
only a small one, but still a possibility. Although I 
know I am in my death sickness and may sink any 
day, yet for the last week there has been a rally, not 
making any real change, but still an amelioration, 
for which I am thankful. I am wasted to skin and 
bone, but the present treatment of such cases 
amongst the highest practitioners is admirable. 
Casting away arrowroot and jellies and all such 
trash, where there is a large bulk and little nourish- 
ment, they give extracts of game and turtle soup, 
small quantities of the most nutritious food. For 
instance, I take in the morning half a tea-cup full of 
grouse soup, and in the evening the same quantity 
of turtle prepared for the sick at the London 
Tavern, with old cognac and water, and stimulating 
medicines between. I have heard of many persons 
kept alive for months by turtle-soup, the lightest 
and most nourishing of all food, but this I do not 

282 



Mary Russell Mitford 

expect. I thought you would like to know all 
about me. 

We have seldom, I think, spoken of religion. 
I always firmly believed in the Divine Mission, 
but I used to worry myself about the manner of 
it. This long visitation, however, has been, I 
firmly believe, sent in mercy to draw me closely to 
Him. I have read the whole of the New Testa- 
ment through once, the Gospels twice, and am now 
cfoine throuorh them ag-ain for the third time ; and 
I feel that, the mystery being above our finite facul- 
ties, the only way is to take it exactly as it is 
written, and throw ourselves on the mercy of God 
through the great Mediator. 

I have a most dear friend, Hugh Pearson, now 
travelling in Switzerland with his bosom friend, 
Arthur Stanley, ^ author of the "Life of Dr. Arnold." 
Hugh Pearson is exactly a younger Dr. Arnold 
himself. He administered the sacrament to me 
before he went, and if I be spared will again on 
his return, a fortnight or three weeks hence. I 
have another most dear friend, my oldest and my 
best, the distinguished London clergyman, William 
Harness ; him I also expect, although he be now 
at the princely demesne which Mr. Hope has just 
purchased in Ireland. I tell you this because you 
will like to hear it. So much for my unworthy self. 
Mr. Fields says in the postscript of a letter just 

' Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-81), afterwards Dean of 
Westminster. 

283 



The Correspondence of 

arrived, "'Chamois Shooting' has been pubHshed 
here." This is every word. I have written to him 
desiring him to write to you himself and to give 
you the particulars. 

October 2, 1854. 
I answer you myself, because both K. and 
Sam hate writing to their betters, and they do so 
much for me that I do not like to encroach on their 
willingness ; but my letter cannot be long because 
I have so very, very many to write every day, and 
the writing at all is, I know, so bad for me, that 
I avoid the task as much as possible. This avowal 
must make you pardon me for not sending your 
poems to Mr. Kingsley. He is in Devonshire, 
not at Torquay, but at some other place in the 
northern part of the county which he has taken 
for the summer. I do not know his address. We 
see each other when he comes to look after his 
curate, and we hear of each other, but we do not 
correspond. He is overwhelmed with business, 
and I wonder that your knowledge of the world 
has not taught you that people who write verse 
themselves are precisely those who care least about 
the verses of other persons. The very last time 
he was here he pulled out a packet of slips just 
arrived from another friend of mine which he had 
not read, and evidently did not intend to read. So 
if he came here now, I, from sincere regard for you, 
should abstain from putting yours into his hand. 

284 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Well, before quitting this authorship question, I 
must tell you that Mr. Fields wrote me word that 
" Chamois Shooting " had been reprinted in 
America. 

Now as to myself. From the day of your visit, 
when I had so nearly died, till about a month ago, 
I continued to grow weaker and weaker, and worse 
and worse. My death was expected from week to 
week, from day to day, from hour to hour. Mr. 
May, however, in spite of his immense practice, of 
my distance from Reading, and of his bad opinion 
of the case, did not abandon the stranded ship, but 
continued to watch the symptoms, and to exhaust 
every resource of diet and medicine, as if his fame 
and fortune depended on the result. This union of 
friendship and skill has prolonged my life, and I am 
certainly better than a month ago ; though still 
confined to my chair night and day, sitting on a 
water-cushion, with no other change than from 
being propped by air-cushions, to having my feet 
lifted on another chair. It has not been thought 
safe to risk the exertion of my being lifted into 
bed. However, I am still alive, although dear Mr. 
Pearson, after administering the sacrament, took 
leave of me in this world, on accompanying Arthur 
Stanley to Switzerland. He is returned, and I am 
not yet dead. Still the first breeze will probably — 
certainly (humanly-speaking), carry the withered 
leaf from the tree, though at present the symptoms 
are improved. Mr. Bennoch will no doubt let you 

285 



The Correspondence of 

know any decided change. I rejoice in what you 
tell me of yourself, your own good health, your dear 
sister's recovery, the fortunate expedition of the 
young princes, and your repeated visit to the Prince 
of Leiningen. To be his guest a second time 
proves a very real liking for your society. 

I have had all sorts of packets from America, 
and letters and messages from almost every man of 
eminence in the literature of that great country. 
Such letters, such messages, and such notices of 
my books as show a personal feeling so strong that 
I wonder how I can have deserved such goodness. 
" Atherton " is selling enormously. By the way, 
you have never told me how you like that and 
the plays. Here and in America "Atherton" is 
thought my best story. Mr. Fields has had a fine 
engraving from John Lucas's picture prefixed to 
the American edition. I hope he will bring some 
copies when he comes in April. Let me hear 
anything you know of my Emperor. The Ger- 
mans seem to lean to Russia. 

In her letter to Ruskin in July Miss 
Mitford made only a casual reference to 
her serious illness, and in his reply from 
Geneva (July 29th), he merely says in 
reference to it : " You do not know how 
much you have done for me in showing 

me how calamity may be borne." Evidently 

286 



Mary Russell Mitford 

no further letter came from Ruskin, and so 
Miss Mitford gives him here a detailed 
account of her illness, its immediate cause, 
and her present condition. Although much 
of the ground has been covered in the 
previous letters to Boner — indeed, some of 
the phrasing is similar — in her letter to 
Ruskin is a more intimate and personal 
note that lends it peculiar interest. Miss 
Mitford had only now about two months 
to live, but these long letters — and she 
wrote many of them — testify to her extra- 
ordinary vitality. 

Miss Mitford to John Ruskin. 

October 2, 1854. 

It is so long ^ since I have heard from you 
or from dear Mr. Ruskin 2 that I cannot help writing 
to enquire how and where you are and have been. 
If I love you all — father, mother, and son — so much 
better than I seem to have a right to do calculating 
only our personal intercourse, and that only with one, 
remember, dear friends, that it is your own fault. 

^ The last published letter from Ruskin to Miss Mitford is 
dated July 29, 1854. 

2 She addresses Ruskin as " My very dear friend," or " My 
dear Mr. John Ruskin," and his father always as "Mr. Ruskin." 

287 



The Correspondence of 

Recollect that for a dozen years or more ^ there has 
been no benefit so large that you have not conferred 
it — no attention so little as to be omitted by either. 
Then to say nothing of books fuller of high and 
noble thoughts than any that have appeared since 
the orreat ag-e of EnofHsh thinkers over which Milton 
and Jeremy Taylor shed their light, and to which 
Cowley and Izaak Walton lent their sweetness, I 
have received from both father and son such letters 
as could only be written by men whose minds and 
whose lives were filled with kindness and purity and 
holiness. Yes ! I have all the right to love you that 
such knowledge and an ardent gratitude can give 
— and you will pardon an intrusion that springs from 
such a source. You would pardon it, I believe, 
under any circumstances, for I have pleasanter 
tidings than usual to send you of myself — although 
I always chose a sunny day for writing to you — a 
day of sunshine without and within. 

Three or four months ago, as I believe I told you, 
I was lifted into bed after a two hours' visit from a 
friend who had come from Germany this summer, 
instead of next, that he might see me once again. 
He is a most kind and considerate person, but it 
had been a bad day with me, and the excitement 
and fatigue of his visit and the subsequent exertion 
of being lifted from a sitting posture brought on 
such a struggle for breath as my faithful maid and 

' Ruskin first went to see Miss Mitford in January, 1847, 
but he had previously corresponded with her. 

288 



Mary Russell Mitford 

her excellent husband took for the last. Since that 
time I have not ventured on a similar risk, but have 
sitten day and night in an easy-chair with a water- 
cushion under me, and no other change than that of 
being sometimes propped up by air-pillows, and 
sometimes having my feet lifted on another chair. 
Let me add that I have had the unspeakable comfort 
of being wheeled to an open window. I am too 
much buried in the chair to see into my little flower- 
court, but I look up to oaks and elms and a graceful 
acacia waving across the clear blue sky. I saw the 
riches of this gracious season cleared from the distant 
harvest fields, carried off in wains laden with such 
crops as I never remember, overfilling the garners 
and crowding the rickyards with their plenty — all 
this I saw, and I still see the clear pool where the 
cattle are standing seeking the shade of the huge 
pollards on this sunny October day as they did in 
sultry August — and like a glimpse of the actual 
world I see the distant high-road gay with flocks, 
herds, carriages, horsemen, carts filled with women 
and men, with shouting boys passing in noisy felicity 
to a country fair. Very thankful am I for my open 
window, still more so for the unspeakable Mercy 
which taking away the meaner pleasures left 
untouched my sympathies and my affections and 
even the interest in daily trifles which so much 
sweetens the healthy joys of common life Well ! 
this window has carried me from my subject. 

After taking to my chair somewhere in June, my 

T 289 



The Correspondence of 

strength declined rapidly. I soon found that I was 
what is called "given over" — and about a month 
ago I believe that after having long looked for my 
death from week to week and from day to day they 
began to expect it from hour to hour — the beloved 
friend (do you remember him at Oxford?) Hugh 
Pearson who came to me to administer the sacra- 
ment previous to making a short tour in Switzerland 
with Mr. Stanley (Arthur Stanley, the biographer of 
Dr. Arnold and of his own excellent father). Hugh 
Pearson took a solemn tender final leave of me. 
Mr. Harness, my executor, who is in Ireland with 
Mr. Hope, sent me the plan of my own humble 
funeral. I am wasted to a skeleton and was myself 
afraid to defer answering a note even for one post 
lest the power should be gone. Mr. May however 
did not desert the stranded ship. In spite of his 
immense practice (he tires four pair of horses a 
day) which gives such value to his time, of my 
distance from Reading (six miles) and of his own 
bad opinion of my case he continued to watch the 
symptoms and to exhaust every resource of diet and 
of medicine just as if his fame and fortune depended 
upon the result. This is friendship — is it not.-* I 
love Mr. May, who is a most noble character — one 
to whom it is a pleasure to owe an obligation. He 
saved my father's life in a case, which happening 
just before the opening of the Berkshire Hospital, 
did make his reputation and caused him, an obscure 
young man, to be chosen Senior Surgeon of that 

290 



Mary Russell Mitford 

great establishment. Well ! owing under Providence 
to his skill and his watchfulness, a decided amend- 
ment took place in the symptoms. My life has been 
prolonged to the present moment and the pulse is 
fuller, the tongue cleaner, and the voice stronger 
than it has been for four months. No chanore in 
my habits has taken place — we have not ventured 
on the lifting me into bed — or on any alternative as 
to posture. I still sit night and day on the water- 
cushion and have no other relief than the alternation 
of propping up with air-pillows and lifting my feet 
on another chair. I do not suppose either that any 
real or abiding improvement has taken place in my 
condition. I have little doubt but a very mild 
breeze would shake the withered leaf from the tree. 
But in the meanwhile I am better — and for 
that I am unspeakably thankful to Him whose 
visitations are mercies. I am afraid that I clinsf 
too fondly to life. Much of this amendment is 
owing to diet. Tell dear Mr. Ruskin ^ that I 
have been forced to substitute cognac brandy for 
champagne on account of the latter after doing 
its work so well producing flatulence — but I am 
still benefiting by his bounty by taking a glass full 
of sherry in every dose of grouse or turtle soup. . . . 
Still, dear friends, there is little doubt but a 
very slight cause would carry me off in a few 
hours. Are you likely to be in England ? As 
I am now I can see one friend a day at any time 

' Ruskin's father. 
291 



The Correspondence of 

from 3 o'clock to 5 in the afternoon. Many 
friends do come to me from London — and it 
would be such a pleasure. Either you or dear 
Mr. Ruskin or you and he together. If you 
were at Denmark Hill — you would not mind my 
maid's getting you a cutlet — letting us know 
beforehand. But only if you are at home and 
can do it without the slightest inconvenience. 

It is another good symptom that I have sur- 
vived a series of American letters which arrived 
last week, and touched me to the very heart's 
core. I can hardly think of them now without 
crying. There were letters or messages from 
almost every writer of note in the States (cer- 
tainly from all the poets) and a gleaning of 
notices (15) on " Atherton." All these letters, all 
these messages, all these articles speak in one 
spirit. Many use the words : " Other writers we 
admire, Mary Mitford we love," and in that vein 
of personal feeling they go on. The critics here 
are almost equally cordial — but in America it is 
one universal outburst — and I am afraid even to 
talk of the sale so enormous does it appear. This 
great illness has almost the effect attributed to 
actual death in awakening kind feeling more than 
common, for it is an extraordinary fact that in 
the case of poor Mr. Justice Talfourd not one 
single copy of his works old or new (and two 
published after his death had before been only 
printed for private distribution, and given away 

292 



Mary Russell Mitford 

very sparingly), not one single copy had been 
sold. . . . 

Let me add to my bulletin that even when 
at worst my cheerfulness never failed me ; the 
danger is that I do too much — see too many 
people — write too many long letters — the other 
day I wrote ten, and was certainly none the better. 
But on the whole all these letters of enquiry 
which load the postman, and the calls of enquiry 
which sometimes crowd my little court, do me 
good. Kindness is a most precious medicine. 
One of those letters was to a clergyman's wife, 
Mrs. Ouvry, who had just been reading all your 
writings — she herself is a daughter of Sir George 
Nicholls the Poor Law Commissioner. Her only 
brother was indolent, and she went all through 
the classics up to ^schylus to give him motive 
to study himself. It is worth while so to charm 
such a woman. 

Monday, October 8, 1854. 

I do not write to provoke a reply, but only 
to tell you that I am all the better for the great 
happiness of anticipating your visit. . . . 

Another reason why I write is to entreat and 
conjure you to dine at my poor cottage. You must, 
dear friend — everybody does. You cannot imagine 
that I should have the folly or the bad taste to 
offer you anything that would give you the lesser 
vexation of putting my little household out of 

293 



The Correspondence of 

the way. You shall have nothing but a cutlet 
and a brace of birds, and some of your excellent 
father's wine. But you must dine here at six 
o'clock on Wednesday or Thursday, and by so 
doing and not coming till four you will give me 
exactly the sort of rest which will enable us to 
go on talking again for an hour or perhaps two 
hours afterwards, without fatigue. The first day 
we will be quite alone — so we jwill on the second 
if you prefer it — otherwise I should like to present 
to you the friend whose spiritual consolation has 
been so great a comfort to me.^ He was at 
Oxford at the time you were there — has I think 
the finest taste and the largest heart and mind 
that I have ever known — admires you as you 
ought to be admired. He is just back from a 
five weeks' tour in Switzerland with the Stanleys, 
being so intimate with Arthur Stanley as to see 
his books through the press, though too faithful a 
parish priest to be himself an author. But this 
shall be left to your decision on Wednesday. 

October i6, 1854. 

You must not fancy that I mean to pelt you 
with letters, dearest Mr. Ruskin, or to dream of 
your sending me answers. Your time is too 
valuable, the precious days of leisure most valuable 
of all. Yet whilst you send me day after day 
something to do good to my mind or my body, 

' Mr. Pearson. 
294 



Mary Russell Mitford 

you must submit to pay the tax of receiving a 
letter to say how thankfully it is accepted — or 
rather not to say that for I have no words that 
express the feeling. 

"In Memoriam " is honey sweet and full of 
beauty. It will be a pet book from this hour — 
although I suspect that I love action better than 
reflection and would rather have written that vivid 
bit of the Lady of Shalott, where Lancelot gleams 
suddenly across the magic mirror, than anything 
in this thoughtful volume. Still both are charming 
and it is a book to keep at one's side and I hope 
to be the better for. 



Miss Mitford to Charles Boner. 

'November 20, 1854. 
It is, indeed, one of the most merciful alleviations 
of this long dispensation that my faculties, such 
as they are, remain clear and unclouded, my 
sympathies as warm as ever ; that whilst the 
poor body has been so severely smitten, the head 
and the heart are untouched. I even retain the 
healthy interest in every-day things, the common 
work-a-day doings of this life of ours, which tend 
so much to lighten and gladden existence. Blessed 
with this power, it would be strange indeed if I 
did not feel with and for my friends. I must 
try to get my book back from Mr. Bennoch 
(lent him to show Mr. Fields), for that would stand 

295 



The Correspondence of 

a far better chance to interest than any 

poetry. I mean the " Chamois Hunting." He 
being a great fisherman and foxhunter, and 
probably a good shot, looking more like a weather- 
beaten sportsman than a clergyman, with the walk 
peculiar to men who ride much and well, your 
talk on that subject might interest him certainly ; 
whether your book would is a different matter. 
I never saw him interested in the slightest degree 
by any other author, except, indeed, one of his 
own followers or his own clique, and then only 
as admiring and helping him. He has great kind- 
ness and great sympathy with working people, 
or with a dying friend, but I profess to you I am 
amazed at the utter selfishness of authors. I do 
not know one single poet who cares for any man's 
poetry but his own. In general they read no 
books except such as may be necessary to do their 
own writings ; that is, to the work they happen 
to be about, and even then I suspect that they only 
read the bits they may immediately want. You 
know the absolute ignorance in which Wordsworth 
lived of all modern works ; and if, out of com- 
pliment to a visitor, he thought it needful to seem 
to read or to listen to two or three stanzas, he 
gave unhesitating praise to the writer himself, 
but took especial care not to repeat that praise 
where it might have done him good — utterly 
fair and false. So was Talfourd when he thought 
it needful to repay praise in kind. Only a very 

296 



Mary Russell Mitford 

few like Scott and Southey, are above this weak 
baseness, and these are certainly not the rising 
men of this day, whatever may be their merits in 
other respects. The public is the only critic or 
patron worth propitiating, and you, if writing 
with rather more life and fire (for those are the 
points you want), condensing and energising your 
matter, and making into one volume what you 
think enough for three, may certainly take an 
excellent rank as a prose writer. To be a poet 
you must live, if not wholly in England, yet 
amongst the English, and there are too many of 
really fair writers of verse to make the attempt 
worth while. I am sure that this is sound advice. 
I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like 
the Dramatic Works. That preface is said to be 
my best bit of prose, has been reprinted in almost 
every paper in the American States, and over and 
over again in the English journals. The books are 
getting gradually into the great private libraries of 
our large country houses, and of course into all 
public libraries, so that there they may wait for 
the chance of some great actor or great actress 
arising and taking a fancy to them. I agree with 
you in preferring " Otto of Wittelsbach " to the 
others. With a real actor it would be far more 
effective than " Rienzi." The contrast would be 
so telling, because there are glimpses of tenderness 
in the first part, and returns of spirit in the last 
which would humanise the character. 

297 



The Correspondence of 

I am so glad that you like it, because if there 
had been any great sins against old German 
character or manners, you would of course have 
been revolted. But, indeed, without any seeking 
after accurate costume, where there is the dramatic 
faculty it comes. There is an instinct which travel- 
lers tell me makes Foscari Venetian, Rienzi 
Roman, Inez Portuguese. It belongs to the 
dramatic faculty, and cannot be supplied by imita- 
tion. Nothing (except Racine) can be so unlike 
Euripides as Mr. Justice Talfourd's " Ion," and 
that play will assuredly not live. It wants tough- 
ness of fibre. I find people very enthusiastic 
about these dramas — I mean people worth pleasing ; 
and have little doubt of the rank they will take, 
though they may have long to wait for it. A more 
complete biography than might be made out of 
that Preface, " Recollections," " Belford Regis," 
and " Our Village," can hardly be. But the 
probability is, that my life-long friend and excutor 
William Harness will collect my letters and make 
a series of volumes. ^ 

Mrs. Browning, to whom at one time (that is to 
say, for many years) I used to write two or three 
times a week, always preferred those letters, written 
in a far more complete abandonment than any- 
thing I should do in the way of autobiography, 
to any of my writings. Professor Tom Taylor 
meant (from the same impression) to have inserted 

' He died before he could do this. 
298 



Mary Russell Mitford 

all I would have permitted of my letters in 
Haydon's correspondence, and John Ruskin, to 
whom I also write with the same laisser aller, 
professes the same opinion. You, to whom I have 
chiefly written as a sort of English correspondent 
a letter of news to a friend abroad, can hardly 
perhaps, judge of these frequent and habitual 
epistles where the pen plays any pranks it chooses,^ 

I do not know that William Harness has any 
such intention, but he is a thorough man of letters 
living in the very highest literary society. Dean 
Milman and he corresponded when one was at 
Eton and the other at Harrow. Mrs. Siddons had 
sittings in the two chapels where he was alternate 
morning preacher, that she might always hear him. 
He refused the dedication of " Childe Harold." 
He got for Sir Walter Scott the place next to his 
own at the coronation dinner. He was the literary 
executor to Thomas Hope, and is just now the 
actual executor of Charles Kemble ; having a 
passion for the drama, which used to make people 
accuse him of helping me in my plays, whilst they 
said I helped him in his sermons, neither being 
true. Only last week he was talking with John 
Murray about an article on me in the " Quarterly," 
which J. M. admitted was merited, and which they 
owed me. 

I will now tell you a little literary news. Tom 

^ The difference in tone here described in the letters to 
Boner and those to Ruskin is very noticeable. 

299 



The Correspondence of 

Taylor was the author of the " Punch " verses on 
the " German Fatherland," reprinted in the 
"Times." This I hear and believe, but don't 
quote me as your authority. Mr. Ruskin is giving 
lectures on ornamenting houses by borders en- 
larged from those in the illuminated MSS. They 
are exquisite — I mean the enlarged borders, for 
he brought them to show me three weeks ago ; 
and so no doubt are the lectures, for he speaks 
even better than he writes. Mr. Bennoch has 
refused a requisition to stand for Coventry. Mr. 
Fields is married to a beautiful New England 
girl, the daughter of one of the principal physicians 
of Boston. The Brownings are getting on with 
their respective volumes. His is a series of 
lyrics, I of which she has only seen a part. Hers 
is a fictitious autobiography,- of which, though 
four thousand lines are written, she has not shown 
him a single line. 

Poor Lady Russell is ten years older since 
the battle of the Alma, from suspense and anxiety. 
Nothing can exceed the mismanagement of the 
English Government or their folly. The only hope 
is in the French. The English miscalculated 
everything, and had not a notion of the power 
of the enemy. Then look at that idiotism of 
sending fine ladies to a military hospital ! The 
great surgeons are all indignant. 3 

' "Men and Women." ' "Aurora Leigh." 

3 Miss Mitford was in ignorance of the real facts. 

300 



Mary Russell Mitford 



Miss Mitford to John Ruskin. 

'November 22, 1854. 
Your figs arrived last night after post time. You 
exhaust the vocabulary of gratitude, though not the 
feeling. Do not send any more of those precious 
boxes. That was a sick woman's fancy and has 
been sparingly taken. And now I wonder if I be 
doing right or wrong in going on — wrong in all the 
conventionalities — right probably according to my 
knowledge of you and your excellent father — the 
motive being ot course that what I am about to 
beg is a part of life — the prescription which inter- 
poses between death and me — and that the motive 
for begging it of dear Mr. Ruskin is the not know- 
ing where to get it in anything resembling the 
same purity — I mean the sherry, a glass of which 
taken with my soup (the rest of which is the pure 
juice of game) every evening. It seems to me that 
the noble supply which dear Mr. Ruskin sent me 
has gone rapidly. To be sure friends have been 
here almost frequently, and when coming from 
London have dinner, of course — still that most 
generous allowance seems to me to have gone 
fast, and wine is not poured down my throat by 
Mr. May's orders four or five times a day like 
brandy. Finally, dearest friend, I do beg half a 
dozen bottles of that sherry. How long ought it 
to last? I should like to know this. 

301 



The Correspondence of 

To-day brought me a letter from dear Dr. Par- 
sons, the writer of those glorious stanzas on Dante, 
and of a volume which I design for you.'' You 
honoured it by liking it much, and I told him so, 
holding it to be a sin to have the power of giving 
such pleasure and not to give it. He says, 
" Remember me to Mr. Ruskin and tell him no 
night passes in which his name is not mentioned 
amongst us. Add that his books are largely read 
and criticised and praised. But this is a land to 
which architecture has never yet come." From our 
land architecture is an art which has departed ; a 
lost art until you restore her. 



Do come, if not this week next — and give me 
all the notice you can. I have been very ill since 
Saturday, but am revived to-day. Still you will 
not have me long. I can show you how to make 
the cowslip ball with scarlet geraniums and those 
we have. Do come. 

November 25, 1854. 
I have just been reading the report of your 
lecture in the " Globe," most kindly sent to me for 
that purpose by Lady Russell, and I have been so 
much struck with a coincidence between your know- 
ledge and my ignorance that I cannot help writing 
to you on the subject. One of my delights in my 

' "/Poems," 1854. 
302 



Mary Russell Mitford 

poor father's life-time, when that acre of garden 
behind our little cottage was as closely set with 
flowers as a meadow is set with grass, was to 
arrange those flowers in jars, and I always found 
that the way to make a brilliant spot, a bit of colour 
that did your heart good, was to make the founda- 
tion white. Half-open roses amongst white pinks 
are delicious both to the scent and the sight. The 
Duke of Devonshire^ (almost the only great man 
whom I know, and who has always been so kind 
to me that I do not apologise for seeming to boast 
of his kindness, as I should of any other Duke), 
once brought me a nosegay composed in the same 
spirit — about a dozen forced moss-rose buds in the 
centre, surrounded by some hundred flower-stalks 
of the lovely lily of the valley, no leaves, and 
indeed I generally found that leaves of any sort, 
even the stemmage and stalkage of the lily, dimmed 
the colour. This bouquet was really ducal in fra- 
grance and beauty, but my common pinks looked as 
well, perhaps better, with moss-roses or the dear 
old cottage rose, had a fine spicy odour and the 
great merit of coming at the same time and lasting 
for weeks, sometimes for months. Ask your own 
dear mother to try this next summer. I dare say 
that little common pink which grows like a weed 
is not choice enough for her garden, so you must 
come and fetch some roots from mine. By far the 

' William George Spencer Cavendish, sixth Duke of 
Devonshire, 1790-1858. 

303 



The Correspondence of 

most georgeous flower-jar that I ever made was of 
double white narcissus studded with choice ranun- 
culuses, not hanging loose but packed tightly 
together. White hollyhocks too mixed with others 
of rich colour either in a tall jar with all their long 
spikes, for the bud of the hollyhock is beautiful and 
so is the peculiar green looking like a daisied lawn 
on a dewy morning — either in that form or the 
single blossoms laid closely together in a china 
dish are very bright and gay. So are dahlias, and 
dahlias look especially well arranged in a china 
bowl with a wire frame of the same sphere-like 
form, into which to insert the stalks. It makes a 
splendid globe of colour. In the autumn the mag- 
nolia grandiflora raising its sculpturesque beauty 
with a border of fuchsias and other gay flowers 
drooping round it is very graceful, and for a wild 
nosegay you will find the white water-lily sur- 
rounded by the purple willow-herb, the yellow 
loose-strife, the deep rose-colour of the ragged 
robin and the exquisite blue of the forget-me-not 
very imposing. I have seen people wondering that 
such an effect should be produced by wild flowers. 
But whether for scent or elegance, nothing can 
surpass a quantity of the meadow-sweet denuded of 
its leaves and left to the charm of its feathery 
lightness and its pearly, creamy tint. Forgive 
this blotted scrawl, dear friend. It is your fault, 
or rather that of your lecture, and you may imagine 
how much I was pleased to find myself right with- 

304 



Mary Russell Mitford 

out knowing it. One other thing I must mention : 
leaves injure the scent of many flowers, syringa 
denuded of them is really almost the orange blos- 
som ; the honeysuckle and mignonette also suffer 
by their vicinity. 

December i8, 1854. 



I was sure you would like Mr. Bennoch. He 
is a man of knowledge, a man stuffed full of facts, 
as you are a man of learning and imagination. . . . 
His story which has oozed out to me quite unos- 
tentatiously, but which I may certainly tell for 
he is clearly proud of it as he has cause, is this. 
Six and twenty years ago he left his Scotch home 
a boy of fifteen with one acquaintance in London 
and not a friend. In the first three years he had 
a little from home — very little which he has repaid 
with interest — and there he stands now as Mr. 
Ruskin knows at the head of one the first houses 
in his line, spending more money in doing good 
and showing kindness than in any other way. . . . 
His only danger lay in his being beset by parasites. 
I know the danger of that in Mr. Justice Talfourd's 
case. It has done no good to Dickens, though 
William Harness who dined the other evening at 
Miss Coutts's to hear him read his new Christmas 
story says it is in better taste than the others — and 
a much greater than either, Wordsworth, would 
have been a far higher poet if like Scott he had 

u 305 



The Correspondence of 

avoided talking of his own work and learnt that 
the highest faculty given to men is that of 
admiration. 

How pretty is your wish about giving me a day ! 
Ah, keep them all ! Who uses them so well ? I 
once heard a similar piece of affection (it is too true 
and deep a feeling to be called flattery) exprest to 
one whom you must know by his sister-in-law a dear 
friend of my own — " Ah " she said, " if all who love 
you could only give you a day of their lives ! " 
And really it seems as if it might have come true — 
for the object of the wish was good old Dr. Routh 
of Magdalen ^ now I believe in his hundredth year 
and for all I know of as likely to live as twenty 
years ago. 

December 19, 1854. 

The packet has arrived. What pictures for truth 
and purity ! and what words for eloquence and 
conviction ! ^ 

Did I tell you that I have been very ill, but am 
now growing gradually better ^ 

I, so bad a judge, am yet sure of those Giotto 
plates, because all last night as I lay, after looking 
at them, sleepless but with my eyes closed — I saw 
them just as I have often seen a bank of purple 

» He died December 22, 1854. He was born in 1755. 
2 '' Lectures on Architecture and Painting," 1854. 

306 



Mary Russell Mitford 

violets, or a bed of lilies of the valley amongst the 
dead leaves of the Silchester coppices — and this 
never happens, can never happen except with fine 
things. 

December 24, 1854. 

This letter of mine though written on Sunday 
cannot go till to-morrow. This is always the case on 
Sunday, because our postman just brings the letters 
to our little office at Swallowfield, three quarters of 
a mile off, and then returns immediately with the 
bag he finds ready for him giving no time for reply. 
I tell you this in the way of explanation not of 
complaint — for if there be one of the divine com- 
mandments holier and more blessed than another, 
it is that of the day of rest which brings the weekly 
pause of labour to man and beast, though I think 
the Gospel itself clearly indicates when it talks 
of our Saviour and His disciples walking through 
the fields, that with the morning prayer should be 
combined that other form of worship for the town- 
penned artisan, the afternoon ramble through the 
ripening corn. Some day or other Louis Napoleon, 
so anxious for the health mental and bodily of the 
poorer classes, will bring about this union. Well ! 
this is why my earnest wishes for every blessing 
to you all will arrive a day after the proper day. 
Ah ! but my prayers have not lagged, unworthy 
though I be, my prayers for blessings upon your 
heads. And I have lived long enough to see how 

307 



The Correspondence of 

very very often even in this world they who pass 
their lives in good deeds, in making others happy, 
and throwing sunshine into shady places, do in their 
own person reap the good seed which they have 
sown. So be it with you, beloved friends ! The 
tenderest wish that poetry or that affection could 
dictate would hardly exceed the desire that you 
might be dealt with as you have dealt with me and 
mine. Happy be you together during this Christ- 
mas, and during many and many a Christmas to 
come ! as happy as it is your delight to make 
others. 

Be very sure that this Christmas will be much 
the happier for all that I owe to yourself and your 
dear parents — for the glowing warmth of heart 
which you have given me. But we must only 
reckon upon the present hour. The feeble, flutter- 
ing pulse which can often hardly be found is kept 
beating by brandy . . . and from 7 to lo times in 
the 24 hours I take enormous doses of that incom- 
parable medicine, not more watered than it would 
be for ordinary sale — take it with the same impunity 
that I might take so much tea. It is a good sign 
that a first-rate surgeon deals so frankly with a 
patient. Twenty years ago a far coarser spirit, 
disguised by useless drugs would have been sent 
from the shop instead of the cellar. Truth begins 
to prevail — and will not be repulsed. 



308 



Mary Russell Mitford 

Miss Mitford to Charles Boner. 

Christmas Day, 1854. 
A merry Christmas and a happy new year to you 
and as many years full of peace and comfort as can 
well be wished for in this world, to you, and to the 
sister with whom I always take for granted your lot 
will be cast. A good and dear sister is, perhaps, 
the safest and best companion after the years of 
youth and passion have gone by, and her ex- 
perience in the same foreign land will give to her 
all the habits, English and German, which you 
would perhaps miss with one whose ways were 
exclusively those of either country. You hardly 
know yourself how German you are, but an English 
wife would make you feel it perhaps painfully, by 
feeling it very strongly herself. I dare say that in 
Germany you seem more English than you do 
here ; and then the German wife would be too 
German. So you see I have settled for you a 
bachelor household ; brother and sister. The 
happiest and most refined manage of London (that 
of William and Mary Harness) is such. He has 
one of the new churches at Knightsbridge.^ They 
have a pretty house in Hyde Park Terrace, nearly 
opposite the old Great Exhibition. He has lived 
more than forty years with all that was best and 
highest in art and literature in London, and still 

' All Saints. 
309 



The Correspondence of 

sees all that there is left of literature in the closest 
intimacy : indeed, in all London there is nothing 
like his dinners for pleasantness and ease. A 
female cousin lives with them. She is well off and 
contributes to the housekeeping, but she would 
have been still more certain of sharing their home 
had she been poor. One widowed brother (Captain 
Harness, R.N.) lives near them : another brother, 
Major Harness, R.A., is sent about to set things 
in order, whatever Government happens to be in 
power. Their children are doing well. They keep 
three maids and hire waiters, and William Harness 
is perfectly the social equal of Mr. Hope with his 
eighty thousand pounds a year, and Lord Lans- 
down with his prestige of rank, fortune, age and 
character. This is much to the honour of London, 
for William Harness, incurably indolent, has never 
by any great work vindicated his own high talents, 
but is accepted as Bennet Langton, and one or two 
more of that day, were, purely on the ground of 
delightful conversation and high personal character. 
This is a good precedent for men of moderate means, 
especially to those who know how utterly untract- 
able the man in question is ; a Harnessite on all 
points of politics and theology. It would have been 
as easy to convert David Deans from, or to, any 
opinion, great or small. His father having given 
my mother away, and our being brought up together, 
has always been among the happiest accidents of 
my life. 

310 



Mary Russell Mitford 

I have to thank you, my dear friend, for a very 
beautiful book, to which I earnestly wish all the 
success it deserves. At present no book sells. The 
only one that is spoken of at all is Lord Carlisle's 
flimsy work,^ which it owes partly to its subject, and 
partly to its being the work of a lord who disdains 
no sort of cant that may bring him popularity — cant 
of liberality, cant of benevolence, cant of patriotism, 
cant of religion. However, your book having no 
temporary interest, can afford to wait. What is 
become of your book on old German manners ? 
That very rapidly written (I don't mean in a short 
time, but vividly, without pausing upon this or that — 
just as contradistinguished from slow), so as to make 
a short small book out of a quantity of material, 
would make a name and be as good as a life 
annuity. Think of this, and get such a book ready 
against people read again. What is sad, is that in 
America, where there is no war, the stagnation in 
the trade is even worse than here. 

Dear Mr. Fields, who has just married a beauti- 
ful young wife (they are said to be the handsomest 
couple in New England), has not even ventured 
to take a house (think of that !), and seems to 
anticipate that he shall be unable to visit Europe 
this year. He says that the prospect ahead is so 
gloomy that he dares not look at it, and to any 
one who knows his exceedingly sanguine nature 

' " Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters," by the seventh 
Earl of Carlisle. 

311 



The Correspondence of 

and English tastes and magnificent habits, this 
picture of such a bridegroom taking rooms in a 
boarding-house, and anticipating a universal crash 
in the American book-world, is astounding. 

The most striking book that I have seen for a 
long while is a dissenting novel, "Philip Lan- 
caster," ^ dedicated to myself. The writer is a 
young girl, and the book is full of every fault of 
which idleness and carelessness can be guilty. The 
mere removal of textual repetition would make it 
two volumes instead of three, but then it is full 
of character and of talent, tells much on all sub- 
jects, knocks down humbug to the right and left. 
Beyond all doubt, if she chooses to give herself 
a common chance, M. N. may be a great novelist, 
but I doubt if she will. She belongs to a family 
of rich paper-makers, is a most charming person, 
accustomed to have her own way. If ever you 
can, read " Philip Lancaster " — you will see how 
racy and original she is. I have been reading 
Madame Sand's " Memoires " in the feuilletons of 
the "Presse." What a pedigree it is! and what 
charming bird-stories there are, and how delightful 
a correspondence between her grandmother and 
her father. Only one feels so certain that the 
correspondence has been touched up, if not entirely 
manufactured, and that the whole autobiography 
is, and will be, a plaidoyer for the exceptional 
woman, and not a narrative of events as they 

' By Miss Maria Norris. 
312 



Mary Russell Mitford 

happened. Dear, dear John Ruskin sent me some 
Swiss books, " Ren^ le Fermier," and two or three 
more by the same writer, with excellent morals, 
and very vile Swiss-French. Just the reverse of 
Madame Sand. You do not care for style as I 
do, which is lucky for you as a reader, but then 
that same dear friend has sent me his own Giotto 
plates, and a book on that school even more 
eloquent than anything he ever did before, a 
perfect storm of eloquence that takes one by 
assault. 

Well, dear friend, you will ask how I am. I 
grow weaker and weaker — fall down two steps ; 
climb up one ! — never regain the point I have lost. 
Do you know those pretty make-believe old books, 
" Mary Powell," " Milton's Courtship," and many 
others ? The author, whom I know only by corre- 
spondence, I love and respect exceedingly. Her 
letters are admirable. Oh ! I have been reading 
that frightful spirit book of Judge Edwards — 
"Spiritualism": which has driven so many people 
mad in America, and is doing the same here. God 
bless you. 



Miss Mitford to John Ruskin. 

December 26, 1854. 
You ask me if I have a fancy for a book — and 
reading last night Mrs. Browning's last letter I 

313 



The Correspondence of 

find her speaking of " Les Maitres Sonneurs"^ 
as one of George Sand's most exquisite pastorals 
— you know how exquisite her pastorals are — so 
I ask you frankly for that little tale. If I could 
get it here at all it would be in English, and 
George Sand's Pastorals in English are flowers 
in a Hortus Siccus instead of flowers in a 
meadow. 

Last night, too, Christmas night, I read over for 
the second time your Giotto book ! What a book ! 
You thinking all the time only of the painter, never 
for a moment of the pen which was painting him ! 
— and there the frequent mention of Lord Lyndsay 
reminded me of the pleasure I once felt at finding 
my name in a book of his. You know such a 
mention gives pleasure in proportion to one's own 
estimate of the writer — and therefore it was that I 
remember to this hour the smile that sprang from 
the heart to the lips on seeing his kind words. 
He is a friend of yours of course. Will you tell 
him some day how much pleasure he gave me 
then — and that I have ever since followed his 
literary course, which is I suppose his real life, 
with as deep an interest as if we were known to 
each other in the ordinary way. His very name 
comes to me like the name of a friend. He is 
very different from his books if the knowledge that 

' Published 1853. In a letter to Mrs. Jameson, October 17, 
1854, Mrs. Browning writes : " Tell me if you have read 
George Sand's ' Maitres Sonneurs,' and if it isn't exquisite." 



Mary Russell Mitford 

his thought — I mean the thought of him — comes 
into my room as brightly as these morning sun- 
beams, do not carry back to his own heart some 
of the gratification which his kindness has given 
to mine. 

Poor Dr. Routh ! He was always kind to me. 
Strange that we should have been talking of him 
so lately.^ Four years ago — only that I seemed 
as it were impelled towards Swallowfield, I had 
nearly fixed on a house in his living of Tilehurst 
— a church-like house where a long, low building 
with a very steep roof was terminated by a tall 
square battlemented tower. 

Once again, beloved friends, I send you the old- 
fashioned hearty wishes belonging to this season. 
Such wishes are prayers. May God bless you, the 
kind and the dear ! 

Miss Mitford died a fortnight later, 
January lo, 1855. Her last published 
letter, dated January 8th, is addressed to 
the Rev. Hugh Pearson, and concludes : 
" To-day I am better ; but if you wish 
for another cheerful evening with your old 
friend, there is no time to be lost." 

^ See note, p. 306. 



31S 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, Lord, 267 

Addison, 236 

Albert, Prince, 243 

Alfieri, 188 

Alma, battle of the, 300 

Alresford, 15, 16 

Ambleside, 48 

America, 20, 206, 211, 286 

Andersen, Hans, 73, 74, 88, 89, 95, 
182 ; Boner's translations from, 47, 
52, 85, 142 ; Memoirs of, 79, 91 

Appert, Benjamin, 79 

Arago, 92 

Arblay, Mme. d', Memoirs of, 56, 64, 
68 

Arnault, Antoine Vincent, 79, 80 

Arnold, Dr., 77, 103, 105, 115, 138, 140, 
264, 290 ; " Life and Letters " of, 
77 ; " Lectures on History " by, 77 

Arnold, Mathew, 27, 140, 264 

Arnold, Mrs., 49, 77 

" Athelwold," William Smith's, 103 

"Athenaeum," the, 68, 202, 251, 253, 
269 

Athole, Duke of, 94 

Atkinson, H. G., 186 

Atkinson, Mrs., 260 

Auerbach, 87 ; Meta Taylor's trans- 
lation of his " Village Tales," 105 

Auersperg, Count, 112, 120 

Austria, 13, 266 

Aylesbury, 80 

Bacon, Lord, 186 
Baillie, Joanna, 81 
Baines, Bishop, 214 



Balzac, Honore de, 42, 50, 70,81, II2, 
113, 134, 179; death of, 166 ; "Les 
Illusions perdues," 67, 142 ; " Les 
Paysans," 43, 57 ; " Les petits 
Maneges d'une Fcmme vertueuse," 
43 ; " Un grand Homme de Pro- 
vince a Paris," 67, 142, 179 ; " Une 
Instruction criminelle," 67 

Barante, M. de, 84 

Barbier, Auguste, 236 

Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, 162 

Barrett, Edward, drowning of, 200 

Barrett, Miss, 25, 36, 48, 50, 53, 55, 56, 
145, 146, 154 ; marriage of, 59, 60, 
61, 64, 66, 256 

Bar rot, no 

Bath, u, 57, 211,249, 257 

Beaconsiield, 100 

Beaumarchais, 67, iii, 135 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 100, 200 

" Bell's Weekly Messenger" 261 

Bennett, Langton, 310 

Bennett, William Cox, 70, 154, 207, 
210, 251, 273, 274 

Bennoch, Francis, 10, 195, 225, 226, 
238, 251, 254, 255, 258, 264, 266, 
269, 270, 271, 273, 274, 276, 277, 
285, 296, 300, 305, 306 

Bentley, Mr., 230, 234, 259 

Beranger, 43, 50, 69, 79, 91, 221, 237 

Bergholt, 107 

Berkshire, 16, 28 

Bernard, Charles de, 50, 70, 81, 1 12 

Blackstone, Rev. C, "]"], 103, 105 

Blanc, Louis, 90, 118 

Bolingbroke, 236 



316 



Index 



Boner, Charles, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 24, 

27, 28, 42, 46, 73, 98, 144, 145, 229, 
256, 275 ; his last visit to Miss Mit- 
ford, 270, 271 ; " The Nightingale 
and Other Tales," 12 

Boner, Miss, 98 

Bonstetten, Mme. de, 69, 70, 218, 

235 
Boston, 265 

Boswell's "Life of Johnson," 107 
Bremer, Frederika, 176, 197 
Bright, Mr., 58 
Brighton, 249, 265 
British Museum, the, 20 
Bronte, Charlotte, " Jane Eyre," 27, 

86, 90, 104, 151 ; " Shirley," 27, 

151 

Browning, Mr. and Mrs., 277, 300 

Browning, Mrs., 11, 15, 26, 27, 28, 29, 
35, 36, 37, 3^, 39, 61, 62, 76, 81, 86, 
90, 97, 107, 120, 122, 129, 136, 142, 
146, 170, 187, 188, 191, 196, 197, 
200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 209, 
212, 220, 226, 230, 239, 242, 247, 
298, 314 ; " Casa Guidi Windows," 
169, 192 

Browning, Robert, 37, 64, 67, 107, 
154 note 

Brussels, 51 

Buller, Charles, 71, 113 

Burke, Edmund, 100, 174 

Burnham Beeches, loi 

Burns, 49 

Byron, 31, 39, 121, 132, 222, 244; 
" Childe Harold," 222, 299 

Carlen, Emilie, translation of " The 
Birthright" by, 221 

Carlisle, Lord, 311 

Carlyle, Thomas, 145, 146 ; " Crom- 
well," 42, 46, 153, 155 ; " French 
Revolution," 153 ; " Heroes and 
Hero-Worship," 153 ; " Life of 
Schiller," 112, 155 

Cary, H. F., 171 

Cavaignac, 92 

Cellini, Benvenuto, 256 

Chesterfield, Lord, 224 



Chalfont St. Giles, 100 

Chambers, William, 67, 84 

" Chamois Hunting," Boner's, 12, 140, 
141, 144, 145, 152, 153, 156, 157, 
159, 163, 169, 172, 173, 226, 243, 
244, 245, 257, 261, 265, 267, 273, 
277, 284, 285, 296 

Channing, Dr., 138 ; "Life and Let- 
ters of, 106 

Charles II, 192 

Charlotte, the Princess, 208 

Chasles, Philarete, 201 

Chateaubriand, 132 ; autobiography 
of, 126 

Chatterton, 182, 200 

Chorley, Henry, 49, 57, 64, 67, 114, 
117, 118, 135, 146, 150, 160, 161, 
164 ; " Old Love and New For- 
tune," 151 

Cibber, Colley, 200 

Cicero, 96 

Clarendon, Lord, 182, 191, 200, 212 

Cliefden, 100 ; woods of, 99 

Clive, Mrs. Archer, "The Queen's 
Ball " by, 71 ; " Paul Ferroll " by, 
71 note 

Clough, A, H., 27, 115, 140 

Cobden, Richard, 28, 114, 137, 179, 

185 
Cobden, Mrs. Richard, 28, 114, 137 
Cockburn, Mrs. (Mary Duff), 102, 

127 
Colburn, 254, 255 
Coleridge, Hartley, 133 
Coleridge, S. T., 28 
Collier, Mr., 253 
" Columbus in Chains," Oxford Prize 

Poem, 103, 105 
Concord, 232 

Constable, 11, 12, 165, 168, 194 
Cooper, J. Fenimore, 126 
Cope, the painter, 55 
Cormenin, Louis Marie de la Haye, 

III 
Corneille, 83 

Courier, Paul Louis, 67, 70, 11 1 
Coutts, Miss, 306 
Covent Garden Theatre, 22, 49 



^7 



Ind 



ex 



Cowley, Abraham, 200, 288 
Cowper, William, 31 
Cowslede, Miss Ellen, 253 
Cox, Mrs., of Lowford, 107 
Crabbe, George, 78 
Crabbe, Mr., of Southampton, 215 
Crashaw, 100 
Croker, 273 

Custine, Marquis de, 42 ; " Le Monde 
comme il est," 43 

" Daily News " the, 13, 42 ; 46 note ; 

56,68 
Dante, 189 
Darmstadt, 12 
Davenport, R. A., 20, 23, 33 
Deans, David, 311 
Defoe, 97 
Delane, Mrs., 68 
Delavigne, Casimir, 42, 79, 234, 

236, 239, 240 ; " La Parisienne," 

43 
Demidoff, Count Anatole, 221 
De Quincey, Margaret (Mrs. Craig), 

263, 264 
De Quincey, Thomas, 216, 246, 260 
Dering, Mrs. Robert, 219 
Devonshire, 159, 160, 257, 284 
Devonshire, Duke of, 192, 303 
Dickens, Charles, 45, 46, 203, 204, 

306 
" Dictionary of National Biography," 

the, 15 
Dilke, Mr., 68 
Dillon, Mr., 224, 225 
Disraeli, Benjamin, 81, 233 
Donnington Castle, 193, 224 
Doran, Dr., 264 
Douro, Lord, 226 
Dropmore, 99 
Drummond, Henry, 233 
Drury Lane Theatre, 22, 279 
Dryden, 100, 127, 175 
Dufraisse, Marc, 210 
Dumas, A., pcrc, 51, 206, 236 ; " Le 

Collier de la Reine," 197 
Dumont, 123, 126, 130 
Dupont, Pierre, 237 



Dyce, Mr., 76 
Dyer, George, 103 

Eastlake, Charles, 55, 274 

Eastlake, Mrs., 163 

Edgeworth, Maria, 47, 82, 84 

Edgeworth, Richard, 20 

Edinburgh, 16, 84 

Elford, Sir William, 35, 55 

Elizabeth, Queen, 192 

Emerson, 155, 232 

England, 9, 51, 63, 64, 82, 84, 92, 97, 

98, no, III, 128, 134, 143, 149, 

152, 18S, 187 
" Esmond," 235 
Eton, the School, 299 
Eugenie, the Empress, 239 
Euripedes, 298 
" Examiner," the, 45 

Fanshawe, Catharine, 163 

Faulkner, George, 224 

Fenelon's " Lettres Spirituelles," 138 

Fields, James T., 27, 28, l8l, 184, 194, 
195, 196, 209, 213, 216, 221, 235, 
240, 244, 246, 257, 258, 265, 272, 
273, 277, 283, 284, 286, 296, 300, 
311 

" Finden's Tableaux," 254 

Fitzgerald, Edward, 31 

Fitzgerald, Hon. Mrs., 58 

Fleming, Mr., no 

Fletcher, Mrs., 49, 253 

Florence, 81, 122, 191, 209, 242 

Fontainebleau, 89 

Forster, John, 45 ; " Life of Gold- 
smith," 96 

Fox, Charles, 139 

France, 56, 64, 67, 89, 95, in, 134, 
176 

Frankfort-on-Main, 12, 57 

" Froissart," Lord Berners' transla- 
tion of, 242 

Germany, 12, 82, 89, 121, 207, 288 
Gibbon, 197 
" Gil Bias," 179 
Gipsies, 215, 216 



318 



Ind 



ex 



Girardin, Emile de, 179, 206 

Girardin, Mme. de, her " Ecole des 
Journalistes," 179, 237 

Goethe, 48, 87, iii, 120 

Goldsmid, Baron, 137 ; his house 
" Summerhill," 192 

Goldsmid, Miss, 137, 138, 233 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 175 

Gore, Mrs., 44 

Granville, Lord, 99 

Gray, Thomas, loi 

Great Britain, 20 

Great Exhibition, the, of 1851, 169, 
170, 180, 181, 187, 188, 192 

Greeks, the, 96 

Griffin, Gerald, 70, 148 ; " The Col- 
legians," 78 ; " Life and Letters " 
of, 78 

Grote, Mr., 185 

Grote, Mr. and Mrs., loi 

Guizot, 266 

Guy's Hospital, 17 

Hall, Robert, 78 

Hamburg, 145 

Hampshire, 15, 16 

Hanska, Madame, 113 note 

Harness, Rev. William, 15, 67, 75, 76, 
149, 162, 222, 223, 272, 283, 290, 
298, 299,306,310, 311 

Harrow, the School, 299 

Havre, 66 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 194, 195, 216, 
218, 232, 240, 257, 258 ; " Blithedale 
Romance," 218, 219 ; " House with 
Seven Gables," 189, 195 ; " Scarlet 
Letter," 27, 175, 183, 189, 194; 
" Twice Told Tales," 192 

Haydon, the painter, 11, 21, 35, 52, 
119, 171, 274, 299; suicide of, 51, 
53-56 ; " Life and Letters " of, by 
Tom Taylor, 255, 256, 261, 262 

Haydon, Mrs., 54, 55, 56, 57, 72, 162 

Hayley, 171 

Hazlitt, 235 

Heckfield, 77 

Hemans, Mrs., 56, 80 

Heme's Oak, loi 



Herrick, 100, 105 

High Wycombe, 81 

Hill, Rowland, 58 

Hinton, Mr., 117, 119, 133 

Hobhouse, 75 

Holcroft, 240 

Holland, Lord, 183 

Holloway, Mr., the printseller, 223, 

224, 225 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 169, 181, 

182, 184, 185, 219, 240, 244, 246 ; 

" Astrasa," 27, 175 
Home, Mr., 56 
Hope, Mr., of Deepdene, 149, 222, 

223, 264, 283, 290, 299, 310 
Home, R. H., 30 
Howitt, William, 121 
Hughes, Mrs., 198 
Hugo, Victor, 48, 69, 81, 134, i86 

236 
Hull, 145 
Humboldt, 120 

Hunt, Leigh, 82, 163 ; his " Autobio- 
graphy," 175 
Hurst, Mr. (Colburn's successor) 

255, 269 
Hymen, Mr., Haydon's stepson, 55 

" Infant Hercules," Sir Joshua's model 
for the, 100 

Ireland, 95 

Irving, Washington, his " Brace- 
bridge Hall," 259 

Italy, 189, 209 

Ivry, battle of, no 

James II, 126 

Jameson, Mrs., 64, 66, 146 

Janin, Jules, 179, 237 

Jennings, Mrs., 169 

Jerrold, Douglas, 45 

Jesse, Edward, his "Book of Dogs," 

68 
Jesse, Heneage, his " Memoirs of the 

Pretenders," 68 
Jews, the, 137, 138 ; Bill for the 

Emancipation of, 233 

19 



Index 



Jonson, Ben, loo, 200 ; " Every Man 
in his Humour," performance of, 

45 
Josephine, the Empress, 213, 238 

K. (Kerenhappuch), Miss Mitford's 
servant, 108, 116, 133, 149, 150, 165, 
211, 218, 231, 252, 253, 265, 269, 
271, 272, 284 

Kemble, Charles, 22, 299 

Kenyon, John, 50, 60, 67, 77 

Keswick, 94, 102 

Kettle, Rosa Mackenzie, 9 note 

Kingsley, Charles, 28, 175, 197, 256, 
257, 258, 260, 272, 284 ; his im- 
pressions of Miss Mitford, 229, 
230; "Alton Locke," 175, 183; 
"Hypatia," 244I; "Saint's Tragedy," 
103 

Kingsley, Mrs. Charles, 256 

Klenze, Baroness de, 58, 193 

Knowles, Herbert, 251 

Kossuth, 195, 196, 199, 206 

" Ladies' Magazine," the, 23 

Lady Place, 99 

"Lady's Companion," the, 146, 164, 

181, 182, 190 
Lamartine, 78, 79, 84, 90, 92, 115, 

125, 132 ; " Genevieve," 175 ; " Les 

Confidences," 126, 131, 132 ; 

" Raphael," 126 ; " Revolution of 

1848," 143 ; " Trois Mois au Pou- 

voir," III 
Lamb, Charles, 32 
Lamb, Mary, 103 
Lamennais, 70 
Lance, the painter, 55 
Landon, L. E., 37 
Landor, W. S., 200 ; his poem on 

Miss Mitford, 274, 275, 278 
Landseer, 55 
Langford, Mr., 70 
Lansdowne, Lord, 310 
Leamington, 133 
Lediard, John, 109 
Leghorn, 66 



Lehzen, Baroness, the, 235 

Leicester, Lord, Ky-z 

Leiningen, Prince of, 258, 286 

Lemon, Mark, 45 

Leslie's " Life of Constable," 42, 46 

"Les Mysteres de Paris," II2 

" Les Mysteres de Rome," 96 

Lever, Charles, 143, 177 

" Life and Letters of John Foster," 

57,77 
Lockhart, 273 

Loddon, valley of the, 190, 193 
London, 17, 19, 62, 72, 89, 97, 102, 

158, 187, 206 
Longfellow, 169, 182, 240 ; his 

"Golden Legend," 207 
Louis XVII, 246 
Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III), 86, 

no. III, 117, 118, 133, 168, 176, 

179, 196, 199, 205, 206, 207, 2X0, 

213, 214, 220, 221, 238, 264, 266, 267, 

276, 286, 308 ; " History of Artillery," 

276 
Louis Philippe, no, 237 
Lovejoy, Mr., 83, 163 
Lovelace, 100 
Lovelace, Lady, 226 
Lucas, John, the painter, 119, 120, 

128, 170, 192, 211, 212, 277, 281, 

286 
Lupton, Mr., 119 
Lyme Regis, 16, 17 
Lyndsay, Lord, 315 
Lyttelton, Lady, 78 
Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 31, 75, 205 ; 

" Harold," 103 

Macaulay, 115, 121, 126, 127, 195, 
226 ; " History of England," 27, 86, 
III 

Maclise, 55 

Macready, 22 

Maidenhead, 99, 105 

Mariana, Juan, 242 

Marie Louise, 131, 221 

Marseilles, 66, 196 

Martineau, Harriet, 48, 49, 73, iSo, 
254, 260 



320 



Index 



Marvell, Andrew, 200 

" Mary Powell," 314 

Mathiide, the Princess, 221, 232 

May, Mr., Miss Mitford's doctor, 109, 
150, 208, 210, 231, 232, 249, 272, 285, 
290, 302 

Maynard, Mary, 209, 241 

Mazzini, 193 

'" Memoires de Sully, " 69 

Mendelssohn, Mrs. Grote's monu- 
ment to, 10 r 

Meyerbeer's " Le Prophete," 117 

Michelet, 70 

Middleton, Lord, 238 

Milman, Dean, 28, 194, 299 

Milnes's " Life of Keats," 113 

Milton, 100, 288 

" Milton's Courtship," 314 

Mirabeau, 115; 122-126, 130-133 
passim, 135 

Mitford, George Dr., Miss Mitford's 
father, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 24 

Mitford, Mary Russell, first acquain- 
tance with Boner, 9, 10 ; with 
Ruskin, 10 ; on letter- writing 11, 
298, 299 ; biography of, 14-28 ; as 
a letter-writer, 29-39 ; " Atherton 
and Other Tales," 14, 258, 267, 268, 
269, 271, 286, 292 ; " Belford 
Regis," 57, 298 ; " Blanche," 34 ; 
" Dramatic Works," 258, 259, 267, 
-276-282 passim, 297 ; " Foscari," 
22, 281, 298 ; " Inez de Castro," 
280, 282, 298 ; "Julian," 28 ; "Otto 
of Wittelsbach," 280, 282, 297 ; 
"Our Village," 21, 25, 28, 86, 162, 
168, 240, 298 ; " Poems," 19, 20 ; 
" Recollections of a Literary Life," 
14, 40, 98, 114, 147, 160, 161, 164, 
199, 200, 201, 207, 224, 225, 234, 
241, 259, 298 ; " Rienzi," 22, 238, 
279, 281, 298 

Mitford, Mrs., 16, 23 

Molesworth, Sir William, 185, 234 

Moliere, 83 

Monmouth, Duke of, 127 

Monroe, 141 

Montague, Basil, 50 

X 1 



Montgomery, James, 58 
Montigny, Lucas de, 125, 126, 135, 
136 ; " Life of Mirabeau," 122, 130, 

131 

Montpensier, Mademoiselle de, 69 

Montrose, 100 

Moore, Mrs., 244, 246 

Moore, Thomas, 20, 50, 76, 244 

Morton, Lady, 107 

Motherwell, 79 

Moulins, 64 

Mudie, Mr., 269 

Munich, 13, 89, 163 

Murray, John, 300 

Musset, Alfred de, 237 

Naples, 242 

Napoleon I, 79, 83, 116, 126, 131, 132, 

155, 276 
Newbury, battles of, 193 
New York, 246, 265 
Nicholls, Sir George, 293 
Noel, Thomas, 105, 226 
Norton, Charles Eliot, 10 note 
Nottingham, 75 

Ockwells, 99 

O'Connell, Daniel, 107 

Octavius, III 

Opie, Mrs., 171 

Orange, Prince of, 100 

Othello, French translation of, 135 

Ouvry, Mrs., 145, 293 

Oxford, 75 

Palmerston, Lord, 185 

Paris, 46, 49, 50, 64, 66,68, 83, 89, 117, 
119, 124, 128, 135, 139, 145, 185, 187, 
191, 196, 210, 211, 213, 264, 266 

Parsons, Dr., the American poet, 242, 
246, 276, 278, 302 

Partridge, Mrs., 73 

Pasmore, Mr., 165 

Paturot, Jerome, 65, 122 

Paxton, 192 

Payn, James, 228, 229, 250, 251, 260 

Pearson, Henry, his oratorio " Jeru- 
salem," 226, 227 



21 



Index 



Pearson, Rev. Hugh, 203, 227, 251, 

283, 285, 290 
Peel, Lady, 54 
Peel, Sir Robert, 56, 162 
Penn, William, 127 
Percy, Miss, of Guy's Cliff, 221 
''Philip Lancaster," the novel,3i2, 313 
Phillips, Henry, 168 
" Picciola," 68 
Pierce, President, 232 
Pisa, 64, 66, 67 
Pitman, Isaac, 57 
Pocci, Count, 58, 59, 65, 68 
" Poetical Register," the, 20 
Pope, Alexander, 175 
Porter, Jane, 171 
Praed, Mrs., 162, 207, 208 
Prescott, 242 
Procter, Mr., 49 
Procter, Mrs., 50 
Prussia, 79, 266 
Prussia, King of, 267 
" Punch," 300 
Puseyite novels, 107 

" Quarterly," the, 20, 300 
Quillinan, Mrs., death of, 72, 73 
Quinet, Edgar, 70 

Racine, 298 

Radcliffe, Mrs., 134 

Raffles, Dr., 58 

Raphael, 132 

Ratisbon, 12, 72, 74, 128, 145 

Reading, 19, 72, 80, 87, 116, 149, 150, 

156, 191, 203, 204 
Reeve, Mr., 49 
Rembrandt, 33 
Retz, Cardinal de, 69 
Reybaud, Marie Roch Louis, 65 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 55 
Richardson, Lady, 253 
Richardson, Samuel, 49 
Robertson, William, 242 
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 48, 49 
Roebuck, Mr., 75, 174 
Rolfe, Baron, 139 
Rollin, Ledru, 237 



Romans, the, 96 

Rome, 81, 242 

" Komeo and Juliet," Miss Cushman in, 

49 ; French translation of, 135, 237 
Rouen, 66 
Rousseau, 130 
Routh, Dr., of Magdalen, 306 ; death 

of, 315 
Rowton's " Female Poets," 96 
Ruskin, John, 9, 10, 11, 27, 28, 39, 68, 

94, 102, 186, 192, 209, 214, 217, 220, 

247, 248, 267, 268, 286, 287, 299, 300, 

313 ; "Stones of Venice," 186, 187, 

189, 236 
Ruskin, John James, father of John 

Ruskin, 9, 214, 247, 280, 287, 291, 

292, 302, 306 
Russell, Henry, 49 
Russell, Dr. Richard, 15 
Russell, Lady, 218, 231, 272, 300, 303 
Russell, Lord John, 167, 174, 244, 246 
Russell, Sir Henry, 123, 182, 203, 204, 

212 
Rydal Mount, 9 

St. Cloud, 272 

St. Helena, 155 

St. John, Charles W. G., 140 ; death 

of, 264 
St. Lawrence, the River, 124 
Sainte-Beuve, 134 ; " Causeries du 

Lundi," 260 ; "Critiques et Portraits 

Litteraires," 43 
Sand, George, 42, 44, 70, 81, 112, 120, 

122, 135, 139, 196, 209, 212, 313 ; 

"Claudie," 197; "Francois le 

Champi," 97 ; " Les Maitres 

Sonneurs," 314 
Schiller, 87, iii, 112, 120 
Scotland, 84, 140 
Scott, Sir Walter, 20, 37, 121, 135, 

297, 299, 306 
Scrope, William, 140 
Seine, the, 66 
Selwin, Mrs. (Christopher Smart's 

daughter), 253 
Severn, Mrs. Arthur, 9 
Sevigne, Mme. de, 31 



322 



Index 



Seward, Miss, 34 

Shakespeare, 39, 135, 195, 223, 237, 

253 ; historical plays of, 121 
Shee, Miss, 219 
Shee, Sir George, 219 
Shei^eld, Lord, 197, 208 
Shrewsbury, 81 
Shrewsbury, Countess of, 100 
Shuttleworth, Mr. Kay, 118 
Siddons, Mrs., 299 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 200 
Silchester, 93 
Skerrett, Miss, 74, 75, 7S, 79, 85, 235, 

243 
Smith, Alexander, 247, 250 
Smith, Horace and James, 20 
Somerville, Alexander, 97 
Somerville, Mrs., 82 
" Song of the Shirt," Hood's, 49 
Southampton, 66 
Southey, Cuthbert, 155 
Southey, Robert, 37, 47, 121, 175, 297 ; 

" Life and Letters of," 151, 155 
Sparks, President, 211 
Sparks, Mrs. Jared, 244, 246 
" Spectator," the, 243, 251 
Spencer, William, 165 
"Spiritualism," Judge Edwards's, 314 
Stanley, Arthur P. (afterwards Dean 

Stanley), 285, 290, 294 ; " Life of 

Dr. Arnold," 283 
Stanley of Alderley, Lady, 197, 214 
Steele, 235 

Sternberg, the Baroness, 254 
Stoddart, 246 
Stoke Pogis, 100, loi 
" Streets of London," Smith's, 68 
Stuttgart, 219 
Suckling, 100 
Sue, Eugene, 42, 44, 57, 81, 85, 112, 

190 
Sutherland, Duke of, 55 
Swallowfield, 171, 175, 181, 187, 222 ; 

Miss Mitford's removal to, 170, 190, 

191 ; churchyard, 28 
Swetman, Sam, Miss Mitford's 

servant, 210, 211, 218, 231, 253, 261, 

269, 271, 284 



" Tales of a Grandfather," 90 

Talfourd, Serjeant (afterwards Mr. 
Justice), 54, 55, 59, 72, 171, 292, 297; 
" Final Memorials of Charles 
Lamb," 103 ; " Ion," 22, 241, 298, 
306 ; "The Castilian," 241 

Taplow, 86, 97, 99, 117 ; woods at, 
102 

Tascher de la Pagerie, Count, 213 

Tascher de la Pagerie, Countess, 266 

Tastu, Madame, 135, 237 

Taylor, Jeremy, 71, 215, 288 

Taylor, Tom, 274, 299, 300 

Tennyson, Alfred, 75, 191, 197, 257 ; 
" In Memoriam," 295 ; " Locksley 
Hall," 75 ; " Ode on the Death of 
the Duke of Wellington," 242 ; 
" The Lady of Shalott," 295 ; " The 
Princess," 27, 75, 84 

Thames, the, 99 

"The Initials," 163, 164 

Thiebault, 260 

Thierry, 70 

Thiers, 70, no, 179, 266 

Thompson, Mr., 225 

Thomson, George, 75 

Thomson, James, 52 

Three Mile Cross, 10, 21, 42, 147, 170 

Thurn and Taxis, Prince of, 12, 167 

Ticknor, Mr., 28, 195, 257, 258, 265, 
266 

" Times," the, 56, 63, 68, 95, 174, 260 

Tindal, Mrs. Acton, 80, 241 

Titian, 33 

"Transylvania," Boner's, 13 

Trollope, Mrs., 75, 77 

Uhland, 112, 120 

Upton Church, 100 

Upton Court, library at, 253 

Venice, 75, 209 

Victoria, Queen, 54, 75, 78, 79, 195, 

235. 258 
Vigny, Alfred de, 135 
" Virginius," 279 



Waller, Edmund, 100 



323 



Index 



Walpole, Horace, 31, 133, 280 
Walter, Mr., of the " Times," 68, 75 
Walton, Izaak, 200, 288 
Warburton, Eliot, death of, 204, 205 
Warburton, Mrs. Eliot, 208 
Webster, Daniel, 142, 192, 195, 240, 

242 
Wellington, Duke of, 226 
Weston, II 

Whateley, Archbishop, 186 
White, Blanco, 106 
White, Kirke, 250 
Whittier, John, 169, 182, 240, 246 ; 

"Poems" by, 175 
Whittington Club, the, 81 
Wilberforce, Bishop, 28, 139 
Wildbad, 193, 229, 254 
Wilkie, 274 



William III, 225 
" William Tell," 279 
Willmott, Mr., 70, 260 
Windsor, loi, 181 
Windsor Castle, 85 
Wiseman, Cardinal, 169, 173, 180, 
185 ; " Lectures on the Hierarchy," 

174 
Wither, 100 
Wood, Sir Mathew, 76 
Wood, Sir William Page, 76, 277 
Wordsworth, Mrs., 49, 73 
Wordsworth, William, 9, 10, 48, 49, 

51. 77, 91, 94, 102, 182, 296, 306 ; 

"Laodamia," 75; "The Prelude," 

27, 169, 175 

Young, Charles, the actor, 22, 279 



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